Autism spectrum disorders

The priority of VIVERE CLINIC

is to solve the problem of childhood neuropsychiatric disorders. High achievements in immunology, genetics, biochemistry allow us to clearly understand the peculiarities of brain damage in children with ASD and develop effective methods to overcome the disease.

And first of all, we focus on identifying the factors that directly provoke the development of neuropsychiatric syndromes in children with multisystemic lesions - autoimmune, inflammatory, allergic, infectious.

Today, the VIVERE CLINIC uses a multidisciplinary team approach to managing children with ASD, including geneticists, nutritionists, gastroenterologists, immunologists, child psychiatrists, child neurologists, endocrinologists, and remedial educators. The available results of the team's practical work demonstrate that the method has the potential to make a full recovery in children even with an unfavorable prognosis, as well as to reduce the frequency of neuropsychiatric disorders among children.

RAS: features and statistics

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by impaired social adaptation, interaction and communication with other people, and narrowing of interests. In recent years, the frequency of clinical cases has increased significantly: according to data for the U.S., from 1972 to 2014 the frequency of reported cases of ASD increased from 1 case per 10,000 people (0.01%) to 1 case per 44 children (2.0%), that is, 200-fold.

ASD not only predetermines the child's social disadaptation and creates communication problems, but is also accompanied by a variety of comorbid pathology (obsessive-compulsive syndrome, attention deficit, and hyperactivity disorder, cognitive impairment, and other forms of psychiatric syndromes). This significantly impairs the quality of life of the child and all family members. In addition, over time, signs of schizophrenia and suicidal tendencies can arise.

Therefore, the priority issue for doctors is the high-quality diagnosis and comprehensive treatment, and for parents of children with ASD - the timely application for medical care and complete therapy under the supervision of experienced specialists.

Recent advances in genetics, molecular biology, and immunology show biochemical and immune-dependent ways of formation of neuropsychiatric disorders and shed light on the mechanisms of brain damage in children with ASD. And this allows us to significantly improve the quality of treatment of the syndrome and talk about the possibility of complete recovery through the introduction of genetic, biochemical, and immunodiagnostic approaches, as well as metabolic and immunotherapeutic interventions with neuroprotective effects, used by doctors at our medical center.

Biochemical factors

The presence of a pathological gene system contributes to the development of a whole complex of metabolic disorders, leading to CNS disorders and impaired functions of the child's body as a whole. The characteristic triad for RAS is primarily impairment of the brain, digestive system, and immune system functions.

Biochemical disorders can be described as oxidative stress. It is a process in which the oxidation and repair of cells is disrupted, causing them to become damaged or die. Above all, neurons are affected. If this mechanism is not affected, more severe conditions can develop over time - asthma, concentration, and attention disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome, headaches, hypertension, etc.

Genetically determined metabolic disorders in children with ASD form individual patterns of biochemical disorders. Our physicians develop specialized laboratory diagnostic panels for their evaluation. Identification of the individual pattern is an important clinical task since it allows selecting an effective treatment program to attenuate CNS lesions and, as a result, eliminate the clinical manifestations of the disease.

Immunological factors in the development of RAS

Genetic and biochemical mechanisms lead to impaired maturation and functionality of the immune system of a child with ASD. Research suggests that the more pronounced the neuropsychiatric disorders in a patient, the more significant the damage to immune defenses.

In the immune status, there is an imbalance of factors providing protection of the body against infectious and allergic agents, tumor development, and autoimmune reactions. A specific form of primary immunodeficiency caused by folate cycle disorder has been isolated. Clinically, this condition in children with RAS is manifested by the following syndromes:
    • infectious;
    • autoimmune;
    • immunoinflammatory;
    • allergic;
    • Oncological.

Recent studies confirm that the presence of a primary immunodeficiency increases the risk of developing ASD in children by a factor of 3.2. Therefore, it is important in the presence of neuropsychiatric disorders to identify the immunological abnormalities that may have provoked them.

Our clinic uses research methods that allow us to accurately identify immunological disorders and eliminate them at the cellular level. In this way, we manage to remove the immunological factor and achieve high efficiency in the treatment of children with ASD.

Immunoinflammatory syndrome

Another characteristic manifestation of immune dysfunction in patients with autistic disorders is the immune-inflammatory syndrome, which causes immune-dependent brain damage. It can be:
    • primary – arises due to a disorder of the regulation of inflammation in conditions of immune dysfunction due to internal factors in the body;
    • secondary – is a part of infectious and autoimmune syndromes.
 
The systemic inflammatory response is accompanied by periodic exacerbations and leads to mental deterioration in the child with PAS caused by the neurotoxic effects of serum anti-inflammatory molecules.

Allergic syndrome in children with ASD

Compared with healthy children, patients with autistic disorders have respiratory, skin, and food allergic reactions 2-3 times more frequently. Allergic syndrome develops due to impaired immune function.

Two mechanisms of allergic syndrome formation in children with ASD can be distinguished:
    • central – caused by the synthesis of neurotensin in the hypothalamus of the brain under the influence of stress factors, provoking allergic inflammation in the brain parenchyma;
    • peripheral – occurs due to allergy to some food products (gluten, casein, etc.) and is accompanied by allergic inflammation in the intestinal wall with subsequent spread to the blood and brain.

Determination of the genesis of the allergic syndrome allows us to choose an effective treatment, in particular, to understand the appropriateness of dietary therapy to alleviate the manifestations of ASD and improve the social behavior of children with this diagnosis.

Multisystem disease as a form of whole-body damage

An exclusively psychiatric approach to the treatment of children with ASD is inexpedient also because, in the disease, lesions occur not only in the nervous system but also in other internal organs. In particular, it is often possible to identify the following disorders:
    • diseases of the intestine and digestive system in general;
    • immune system dysfunction;
    • skin and upper respiratory tract pathologies;
    • blood disorder;
    • connective tissue dysplasia.

In other words, we are not just talking about neurological and psychiatric symptoms, but a special form of lesions of the whole organism - a polygenic multisystem disease. And autism in this case is one of the manifestations, not the cause of the development of other organs and systems.

They are of equal, rather than secondary, clinical importance. Sometimes the polygenic multisystem disease is manifested by severe lesions of internal organs and is not accompanied by mental disorders. In addition, it is the peculiarities of the disorders of internal systems, rather than the CNS, that can determine the prognosis of the disease. For example, a fatal case in a child with ASD may be provoked by sepsis, pneumonia resulting from immunodeficiency.

Consequently, both diagnostics and treatment should be based not on the flattening of neuropsychiatric disorders, but on a complex approach, identifying the cause of the illness and all of the existing disorders.