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Autism symptoms 'could be reversed'
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 26/06/2007

The prospect of a pill to reverse the symptoms of severe forms of autism was heralded yesterday after a major advance in the treatment of the condition was unveiled by scientists.

By inhibiting an enzyme in the brain, the researchers managed to halt the development of the condition. Their work, which provides strong evidence that brain damage can be reversible, should boost the search for treatments - via a pill or gene therapy.

The researchers were led by Susumu Tonegawa - the 1987 Nobel laureate and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, near Cambridge, Mass.

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"I find it very exciting," he told The Daily Telegraph yesterday. "This is a new target (for treatments)."

Autism is a catch-all term for a wide range of symptoms - usually marked by an inability to recognise and show emotions. Fragile X Syndrome -or FXS - is the most common genetic cause of autism and affects mostly boys at a rate of one in 4,000. It is linked to a mutated X chromosome gene.

Today's research, which was carried out on mice, is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Mr Tonegawa.

His team's findings, along with earlier work in Edinburgh on the most common cause of mental impairment seen in girls, provides strong evidence that brain damage can be reversed, even if the cause is present from the start of brain development.

The studies end an argument about whether - by the time a child is born - it is too late to counter the havoc caused by faulty genes.

Prof Adrian Bird of Edinburgh University, speaking yesterday from a conference in Chicago, said of the latest study: "I find it very encouraging. It is another example of the flexibility, or self healing properties, of the brain, which no one had expected."

The work of Prof Bird's team complements that of the Americans because it focused on a disorder at the extreme end of the spectrum of symptoms of autism, called Rett syndrome, which affects at least 10,000 children in the UK alone, mostly girls.

The team found that it could make Rett symptoms disappear in mice by activating a specific gene.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/...earth/2007/06/26/sciautism126.xml