Prediction & Prevention Track
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ABSTRACTS: Prediction and Prevention of ASD: Signs to watch out for and treatments that will help you avoid the diagnosis of autism 8:00 am - 12:30 pm Dave Humphrey, JD, Kenneth Bock, MD, Martha Herbert, MD, PhD, and Doreen Granpeesheh, PhD, BCBA-D, will take attendees through a 4-part series emphasizing the importance of early detection of the symptoms of ASD as helping practitioners alter the course of diagnosis. With early detection, practitioners can identify treatment strategies and interventions that, when provided intensively, can prevent children from developing the full symptom criteria of autism. These red flags and treatment options will be reviewed. The speakers will include data from young siblings of children with autism illustrating that children who receive treatment at a very early age do, in fact, avoid receiving an ASD diagnosis as their symptoms are effectively reversed. Here's just a sample: Autism in Infancy: Predetermined or Produced by Active Treatable Processes? presented by Martha Herbert, MD, PhD Is autism stamped into the brain by genes from conception? Or does it develop? If it develops, what influences that development? And how can we influence those influences? If the brain isn't indelibly stamped with autism, then what happens to it to transform it so that it starts producing autistic behaviors? At what range of prenatal or postnatal ages might this start? Is there any way of detecting those changes in living babies? If we can head off the emergence of the debilitating features of autism, how can we prove we did this if we can't be sure ahead of time whether this might be where a baby is headed? Does it matter whether our measures are specific for autism or not? How can we make medical screening and prevention measures the standard of care? What would we need to demonstrate to make this happen, and how would we do this most powerfully? What are the biggest obstacles we would need to overcome? What would population-wide health-promotion and health-protection measures look like? What would be the most efficient and effective ways to carry this out? How much is our success in this a function of how well we answer the above questions? Ken Bock, MD, presents: Considerations for Prevention of Autism Spectrum Disorders The prevalence of autism spectrum disorders has increased at least 1500% in the last 20 years. More so, in the last 2 years, we have seen a further increase from 1:150 children to 1:91 children. There is no known cause and no known cure. However, emerging scientific research, coupled with clinical experience has provided us with various suspected causative factors, coupled with genetic predisposition. These have helped us to formulate treatment strategies that have resulted in improvement of the majority of the children treated, as well as an increasing number of children treated recovering and losing their diagnosis. Chemical and heavy metal toxicities appear to be significant contributing factors to the rising rates of autism in this country and around the world. These chemical exposures persist. Extensive toxicants have been noted in the umbilical cord blood of pregnant women, which should be the source of nourishment for the developing fetus. Yet neonates, infants and children continue to be exposed to these persistent environmental toxicants. Prevention becomes paramount in an overall approach to lessening the impact of this epidemic of autism spectrum disorders, and this lecture will explore possible avenues for this. Kendal Stewart, MD & Lisa Hunter Ryden, MT (ASCP), MBA 1:45 - 2:45 pm Preventative and Management Strategies for the Neuroimmune Disorders Dr. Kendal Stewart and Lisa Hunter Ryden will present key areas related to prediction, prevention, diagnosis, and management of neuroimmune disorders, particularly disorders associated with behavioral regression and neuroimmune symptoms such as allergies, asthma, ADD and autism. For preventative and predictive strategy, they will discuss the prenatal health status of the mother and how this impacts the newborn's neuroimmune system, the use of newborn screening biomarkers to assess immune function, and the birth parents' genetic and medical histories. For diagnosis of the neuroimmune disorders, Dr. Stewart will discuss Sensory ViewR, the diagnostic system he patented which provides an integrated and easy-to-read graphical illustration of the patient's neurosensory and vestibular system function, and Lisa will discuss the prioritization and cost management of laboratory biomarker testing using genetic and protein biomarkers. As hosts of the monthly show on Autism One Radio titled, "The Parent and Physician Partnership for Healing our Children," Dr. Stewart and Lisa discuss their team approach to management of the neuroimmune disorders and the ongoing recovery of Lisa's son from many medical symptoms related to his disorder of autism. In 2007, Lisa's son presented clinically as nonverbal with a diagnosis of heavy metal toxicity, gastrointestinal dysfunction, multiple allergies, and pathogenic burden. Today, he has recovered from many of those medical symptoms and is now speaking in sentences. |
