14 DAY TRIAL // A team of scientists at the University of South Florida says that it managed to link abnormalities in the human immune system with the onset of pervasive developmental disorders such as autism. The data could be useful for developing new types of therapies for these conditions.
Patients suffering from autism spectrum disorders (ASD) tend to display abnormalities in the way their immune systems are expressed, and the team managed to discover that elevated levels of an amyloid precursor protein (APP) are responsible for this.
The research group also says that certain populations of immune cells in some autistic patients tend to exhibit unusual functions and properties. What the new study suggests is that APP fragments running through the bloodstream may have something to do with skewing up these cells.
In the long run, this research implies that APP fragment count may be used as a biomarker for autism. If this is possible, then researchers will have yet another tool at their disposal to analyze and understand the physiology of this disorder with.
Details of the research effort appear in the latest online issue of the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB).
As an interesting side-note, the amyloid protein usually makes the focus of researches related to Alzheimer’s disease, a form of neurodegenerative dementia that mostly affects the elderly, and manifests itself by causing neural damage.
“Autism affects one in 110 children in the United States today. While there are reports of abnormal T-cell numbers and function in some persons affected with autism, no specific cause has been identified,” says Jun Tan, MD, PhD, the leader of the research group.
“The disorder is diagnosed by behavioral observation and to date no associated biomarkers have been identified,” the investigator goes on to say. However, the specific APP fragment called sAPP-α could constitute the first such marker ever found for autism.
“Not only are there no associated biomarkers, but the prognosis for autism is poor and the costs associated with care are climbing. The work of Dr. Tan and his team is a start that may lead to earlier diagnosis and more effective treatments,” adds team member Francisco Fernandez, MD.
Past studies have determined that sAPP-α plays an important role in the growth of nerve cells in the brain. However, the fact that it was also involved in underlying the immune response of T-cells in the bloodstream was not yet known, PsychCentral reports.