The April 2007 issue of Discover Magazine provides a survey of the current thinking on biomedical aspects of autism.  Below are some highlights from this article.

In December, 2006, billion dollars was been approved in research through the Combating Autism Act (one can only hope this money will actually find its way to scientists on the cutting edge of autism research).  In the meantime, research is turning up intriguing clues including abnormal tissue in the intestinal tract, inflammation in the brain, food allergies, and asynchronous brain wave patterns.  There continues to be an emphasis on funding research which continually attempts to put the blame on genetics and disprove the connection between vaccines and autism.  Ironically these studies seem to be leading instead to the conclusion that there may be an interaction between vulnerable genes and environmental triggers, along with a growing sense the low-dose exposure to multiple toxins and environmental stressors may also contribute to autism.   The genetic research has lead to the current theorizing that autism may be releated to common gene variants, called polymorphisms, that may be derailed by environmental triggers.  Genes affected by environmental triggers (such as vaccines) may disturb fundamental metabolic pathways in the body and lead to chronic, inflammatory conditions in the brain, immune system, and digestive system.

The article includes the current statistic of 1 in 166 children being diagnosed per live births in the U.S.  With four times as many boys as girls diagnosed, this would theoretically bring the incidence of boys diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in the United States to at least 1 in 50.

IThe official description and prognosis for autism given by the medical establishment and major autism organizations that children are born with autism and that it is incurable.  In spite of this, evidence to the contrary is accumulating that children are not necessarily born with autism and  a small, but significant number of children are recovering from autism - and countless more are improving significantly.  "In spite of so many years of assumptions that a brain disorder like this is not treatable, we're helping kids get better.  So it can't just be genetic, prenatal, hardwired, and hopeless," says Harvard pediatric neurologist Martha Herbert, author of a 14,000-word paper in the journal of Clinical Neuropsychiatry.  "I no longer see autism as a disorder of the brain, but as a disorder that affects the brain," Herbert says.  "It also affects the immune system and the gut.. . .What I believe. . .is that genes and environment interact. . .changing celluar function all over the boty, which then affects tissue and metabolism. . .And it's the interaction of this collection of troubles that leads to altered sensory processing and impaired coordination in the brain.  A brain with these kinds of problems produces the abnormal behaviors that we call autism."

In a 2005 study, Carlos Pardo, a neurologist from Johns Hopkins, found inflammation in immune responsive brain cells of autistic patients.  According to Pardo, "We had brain tissue from autistic individuals as young as 5 and as old as 45 and we found neurological inflammation in all of them. . . We're very excited about this research because one potential treatment approach is. . .to downregulate the brain's immune response."  Pardo is collaborating on a pilot study with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to test minocycline, an anti-inflammatory antibiotic drug on autistic children. "Minocycline is a very selective downregulator of microglial inflammation," he says.  "Neurologists already use it in multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's."

According to Pat Levitt, director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development, a gene called MET doubles the risk of autism.  MET  modulates the nervous system, but and immune system.  According to Levitt, "This gene is important for repair of the intestine and immune function.  And that's really intriguing because a subset of autistic children have digestive and immune problems."  This gene variant occurs in 47% of the population - making it just one contributing factor.

Jill James, director of the Autism Metabolic Genomics Laboratory at Arkansa Children's Hospital, has found that many children with autism do not make enough of the anti-oxidant, glutathione, which is critical for removing toxins from the body.  In her 2006 study, published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics, she found that common gene variants that support the glutathione pathway may be associated with autism risk.  This pathway is linked metabolically to the methylation pathway.  Methylation helps regulate which genes are expressed; abnormal methylation can cause disease.  James found that this metabolic disfunction is treatable when targeted with nutritional intervention.  James has tracked 8 autistic children who were taking supplements of key nutrients in the methylation pathway - folinic acid, trimethylglycine, and methyl B12 - and found a significant increase in important markers of methylation and glutathione synthesis.  James and her colleagues received a 2 million dollar grant from NIH, part of which will be devoted to sorting out the relationship between metabolism, genes and behavior.

James says, "We also plan to look at mitochondria dysfunction," she says.  "Since mitochondria are the energy powerhouses of the cell, they're also the place where the free radicals (which play a role in oxidative stress) are produced.  If the electron transport chain in the mitochondria is faulty and you're not efficiently making ATP, you'll produce more free radicals and deplete your glutathione.  If this hypothesis turns out to be correct, we can give nutrients like Coenzyme Q10, magnesium, and acetyl-L-carnitine to help stabilize the mitochondria.  Now this is just a hypothesis, but this is the risk you take with science.  You make your best guess and you carry out your study and you see."

In December 2006, Harvard researchers announced in the Lancet that industrial chemicals may be impairing brain development in children around the world. 

Also included is the epidemiological study in Texas of the correlation of increased incidence of autism in areas near major polluters (including mercury spewing coal-fired power plants).