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Home | Pregnancy Timeline | News Alerts |News Archive Jun 18, 2015
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Low glycemic index diet reduces autism symptoms Bread, cereal and other sugary processed foods cause rapid spikes and subsequent crashes in blood sugar. In contrast, diets made up of vegetables, fruits and whole grains are healthier, in part because they take longer to digest and keep us more even-keeled.
The number of people diagnosed with autism — a spectrum of disorders characterized by social avoidance, repetitive behaviors and difficulty communicating — has risen dramatically over the past two decades for reasons that are unclear. More people may be diagnosed due to a broader definition of autism and better efforts in diagnosis, but a true increase in the disorder cannot be ruled out, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Lifestyle change is one potential factor out of many possible causes of autism. 'One thing that's driving a lot of general physiological changes in people is changes in the diet,' says the study's corresponding author Pamela Maher, a senior staff scientist in the laboratory of professor David Schubert at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
The scientists fed pregnant mice either the high or low glycemic index diet and kept their offspring on the same diet after birth and weaning, because their brains are still forming crucial connections. The researchers then used a battery of behavioral and biochemical tests to study the mice after weaning. The two groups of animals consumed the same number of calories and were identical in weight. But mice that ate a high-glycemic index diet showed all of the expected behavioral symptoms of autism. Their social interactions were impaired, they repeated actions that served no apparent purpose, and they groomed extensively. The mouse models of autism on a normal lab diet (with a medium glycemic index) are already known to generate fewer new neurons, and some of their existing cells and neuronal connections are abnormal compared with those of normal mice.
In addition, the brains of the mice eating a high-glycemic index diet appeared to have greater numbers of activated microglia, the resident immune cells of the brain. Their brains also expressed more genes associated with inflammation, compared to the mice fed the low-glycemic index diet. Other studies of human mothers and their children with autism have implicated the activation of the immune system. For the most part, these studies have focused on infection, which causes a bout of inflammation — as opposed to a high-glycemic index diet, which causes chronic, low-level inflammation, Maher says.
We were really surprised when we found molecules in the blood that others had reported could only be generated by gut bacteria,' Maher says. 'There were big differences in some of these compounds between the two diets.' The group plans to analyze gut bacteria, and its potential link with features of autism, more directly. They also hope to better understand the role of inflammation in the ability to generate new neurons. Lastly, they plan to vary the timing of exposure to the various diets in the mouse model of autism by giving pregnant mice a high-glycemic index diet, for example, and then keeping their pups on a normal diet. Abstract Other authors on the study were Antonio Currais, Catherine Farrokhi, Richard Dargusch and Marie Goujon-Svrzic, of the Salk Institute. The research was supported by the Fritz B. Burns Foundation. About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
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