New Variant of IBD Observed in Children With Developmental Disorders – (10-30-00)

New Variant of IBD Observed in Children With Developmental Disorders

Dr. Andrew Wakefield is truly a pioneer, and yet he has received an indescribable amount of criticism for his studies suggesting a possible link between the mumps vaccine and autism. And yet, like many old pioneers ridiculed by their colleagues, further research is confirming his findings. There appears to be a link between the health of the GI tract and autistic patients. While some may consider this ludicrous, to those of use familiar with functional medicine, it is very plausible.

Am J Gastroenterol 2000;95:2154-2156,2285-2295 Children with developmental disorders seem to be at risk of developing a distinct variant of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that lacks the typical features of either Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis. “The combination of ileocolonic lymphoid nodular hyperplasia and colitis in children with developmental disorders distinguished them from developmentally normal children with similar symptoms (including abdominal pain and constipation) in whom lymphoid nodular hyperplasia and histopathological change were uncommon,” Dr. Wakefield and colleagues say. The accumulating evidence of a specific variant of enterocolitis in autism makes it “tempting to suggest that a gut-brain interaction” may be involved in the pathogenesis of what researchers are beginning to call “autistic enterocolitis,” the authors note. They explain that recent detection of opioid peptides of dietary origin in urine from some affected children is further evidence of this possibility. But in a related editorial, Drs. Eamonn M. M. Quigley and David Hurley, of the National University of Ireland in Cork, say that “there is, at present, insufficient evidence to establish either a direct or indirect link…between an inflamed gut and the brain, in autism.”