this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago

I heard that being liberal makes you autistic.

[–] SolidShake@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Great so now I’ve been downing Tylenol for no reason?

FUCK!

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

It says no single thing, so you need to do multiple things, yeah? Get circumcized. 🤷‍♂️

[–] mysticpickle@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Think you're safe as long as you don't also get a vaccine at the same time.

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[–] stinky@redlemmy.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Trying to conclude "what it's caused by" is driven by wanting it to be over with. It's been researched, we found a reason, move on to something else.

[–] AceSLive@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] stinky@redlemmy.com 1 points 1 day ago

JFK Jr. says it's tylenol. I'm not kidding. He wants to check that box and move on to something he actually cares about. It's a shitty way to treat people.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 1 points 1 day ago

Tylenol and circumcision

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It’s multiple conditions we group together naively based on surface level symptoms. Same for many disorders.

The type that comes with gender and sexual fluidity, bendyness, ADHD = rccx caused ASD.

Then that will have multiple subtypes based on mutation combination within the rccx module.

(The RCCX module would’ve been excluded from the genetic analysis the report this article is based on - due to its complexity).

Severe/non-verbal ASD is more likely completely unrelated and caused by dendritic abnormalities (reduced or excessive branching, immature spines, disrupted morphology, etc)

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

You seem to have a more in depth grasp of the precise genetics involved here than I do, what would your opinion be of Dr. Frye's concept of "Cerebral Folate Disorder" that I mention in another comment?

Here's a paper from him and his team, he has many though:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5794882/

As best I can tell, he is focused on the non-syndromic, non-verbal, uh, what this recent paper OP is about seems to categorize as 'early diagnosis autism'.

He's got a cluster of specific mutations that produce an evidenced, differing neurochemistry in the brain, and apparently a potential treatment for that 'subypr/component' as well?

I... don't agree with his general description of autism as basically only the kind that makes you developmentally delayed, but, if you can get past that... do you think he may be onto something as far as that being an distinct 'type' of autism?

Also, apologies if I am using some terms incorrectly or innacurately, I am not a neuroscientist.

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[–] Goun@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I thought we already knew, it's a spectrum

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago

A spectrum suggests varying degrees of a single condition, and would be compatible with both the hypothesis that all occurrences of this condition share a cause and the hypothesis of multiple causes. So to claim there are multiple causes is different from saying that cases fall on a spectrum. It tells you that multiple conditions can appear the same way, so they get diagnostically grouped together based on symptoms even though the underlying causes, and so the appropriate treatments, can be quite different.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The 'spectrum' terminology comes about from the field of peychology only being able to attempt to analyze ... basically, 'symptoms', behavioral profiles, phenotypes, and also the field of psychology constantly changing how it does those analyses as well as categorize observable behaviors into conditions/disorders.

What this new understsnding is pointing toward is that there is an actual, identifiable, genomic variance of mutation clusters that actually explains how differences in that spectrum of 'symptoms' actually work, what actually causes which ones.

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

But now it's a conclusion and presumably a publication that can be referred to.

[–] Angelevo@feddit.nl 3 points 1 day ago

In other news: scientists reconfirmed the wheel to be round.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Copy pasting some sections of my own comments from similar discussions over the last month or so:


IRT Folinic Acid as a 'treatment' for Autism:

...there are early preliminary studies indicating that this may be a way of alliviating some of the effecfs of non-syndromic ASD.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5794882/

Non-syndromic ASD is essentially nonverbal, nonresponsive ASD.

… There are many autistic people and kids who are not non-syndromic, an ASD diagnosis does not even require this kind of behavior.

Further, the proposed mechanism of action in using folinic acid to ‘treat’ autism is that it acts upon an abnormal level of folate blockers…

While it is true that ASD folks tend to have more of these folate blockers than non ASD folks…

Many of them do not.

Generally speaking, abnormal folate pathways… appear to be called Cerebral Folate Disorder (CFD) by this Dr. Frye who seems to be spearheading this line of research.

So... this would arguably be an identifiable subtype or subcomponent of ASD, that has an actual, physically identifiable (and seemingly potentially treatable) aspect to it, caused by a known cluster of genetic mutations, which themselves cause... basically, your neural pathways in your brain to just literally be different from those without the genetic mutation cluster.

Of course, epigenetics, to what extent and under what conditions genes actually express themselves is a complicating factor here.

Nurture can change how your Nature works, at a fundamental level.


More general commentary on the idea of Autism subtypes/conponents:

There is an emerging, but far from totally agreed on and fully explained… view, that, well, autistic brains, or at least certain potential subclasses of autistic brains… actually do have physically distinct brain chemistry and activity patterns than non autistic brains.

Basically, more and more actual genes and gene clusters are being identified, and at least some of those are being found to alter brain neurochemistry in measurable and mechanistically understood ways that nobody seems to have even known were possible before.

There could possibly thus be a propsensity toward an actually physically different reaction to many kinds of drugs from at least some autists.

But this is also fairly confusing because what is … currently being called ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder’ via psychological diagnosis… well, some autistic people have some of these mutations, some have all of them, some have none.

So… its far from fully understood, but it may be the case that in 5 or 10 years, Autism ends up being actually subclassed partially based on genetics and epigenetics, beyond just based on a description of behavioral patterns.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Folic Acid has been taken by pregnant women for over 40 years. Folic --> folinic

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

... ok?

This paper is talking about using administered folinic acid to address a deficiency of folate transport within the brain, where that deficiency is caused by a known cluster of genetic mutations, in a person diagnosed with ASD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_folate_deficiency

This is not talking about causing autism via the mother taking something during pregnancy.

It is talking about how, for a subset of ASD people, who have this particular cluster of genetic mutations, that taking folinic acid can alleviate some of the symptoms associated with folate deficiency.

Nothing to do with folic or folinic acid taken by the mother during pregnancy causing autism.

Its talking about a potential subset of autism being potentially treateable, that subset being broadly in line with what the OP Nature article/paper here describes as 'early diagnosis autism', which has much more readily apparent and obviously recognizable behavior patterns than 'late diagnosis autism'.

If you go into that paper, you will indeed see that they found that amongst people with ASD, but without the associated folate disorder connected mutations, giving them folinic acid doesn't really make any noticeable difference...

... which arguably lends creedence to the idea that there are at least two different 'kinds' of actual things going on that, which are currently all being lumped together as ASD.

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