14 DAY TRIAL // On April 24, a team of University of Guelph researchers went public with the news that they had succeeded in developing a vaccine which might help alleviate some of the symptoms commonly associated with autism.
Information shared with the public says that the specialists who worked on this project meant for the vaccine to offer protection against a gut bug known to the scientific community as Clostridium bolteae.
Due to the fact that said gut bug is more common in children affected by autism than it is in healthy youth, the researchers hope that the vaccine they have developed might prove efficient in terms of helping autistic individuals.
According to the official website for the University of Guelph, the autism-related symptoms that this vaccine is expected to tackle are gastrointestinal ones.
“Little is known about the factors that predispose autistic children to C. bolteae. Although most infections are handled by some antibiotics, he said, a vaccine would improve current treatment,” argued chemistry professor Mario Monteiro.
“This is the first vaccine designed to control constipation and diarrhea caused by C. bolteae and perhaps control autism-related symptoms associated with this microbe,” the researcher further elaborated on the matter at hand.
What Mario Monteiro is referring to is the fact that, according to several studies, both the severity and the symptoms on an individual's form of autism are influenced by gut bacteria.
Therefore, acting on the latter might help improve on the former, the same source informs us.
Presently, the vaccine has only been tested on animals. Still, the researchers are confident that in just ten years' time they will be able to roll out clinical trials involving human patients.
These trials are expected to pave the way for the vaccine's becoming available to the general public.
Commenting on the development of this vaccine, Mario Monteiro said that, “This is a significant first step in the design of a multivalent vaccine against several autism-related gut bacteria.”