Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) belongs to the developmental, pervasive neurological-biological disorder. This disorder is characterized by problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, social interaction, unusual, repetitive and very limited interests and skills. This means that patients with ASD have a special and characteristic pattern of behavior, interest, and activity that manifest in very limited and different ways. The etiology of ASD is very complex and still unexplained up to this day, so the causes are still being intensively investigated. The prevalence of ASD is changing and growing from year to year. Over the past decade it has varied considerably depending on the older data. However the ration between boys and girls is constant and ranges between 2:1 and 6,5:1. many studies that have been conducted and published over the last 50. - 60. years, have demonstrated the decisive genetic factors for the development of ASD. Today, however, more and more research is focusing on the environmental factors that influence ASD development. Among the studied environmental factors include infections, drugs, vaccines. One of the most important environmental factors is certainly heavy metals, which appear in the organism as trace elements. Among the most toxic metals are mercury, lead, aluminium, arsenic and cadmium, which causes various injuries in the organism. Despite all the research, the cause of ASD remain unknown.
Despite the fact that ASD is neurobiological disorder, its diagnosis is based on the collection of accurate anamnestic data on the development of the child at numerous doctors examinations, observation of the child in various situations, conditions and psychological testing. We do not yet have a biological test or a specific marker, despite a lot of research in this area. The discovery of this would facilitate the diagnosis of the disease and enable the early intervention. This would allow to include children to a specific therapeutic groups, which would contribute to the better development of social and communication skills and enable the integration into society, which would further to a better life of a patients.
In our study, we included 141 children in the group with the ASD, and 49 children in the control group, which represented healthy children. The age of the children was between 2 and 18 years. We wanted to determine whether there were statistically significant differences in the concentration of essential and toxic metals measured in urine between children with ASD and the control group of healthy children. The results are presented according to the creatinine concentration for easier interpretation. Toxic and essential metals in urine were determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS).
Our results show that children with ASD has higher urinary concentrations of most toxic metals/creatinine (aluminium, arsenic, cadmium and mercury) than healthy children, as well as higher urinary concentrations of essential metals/creatinine (lithium, calcium, chromium ,manganese, iron, cobalt, copper, zinc and selenium) as a control group of healthy children. A statistically significant difference between children with ASD and healthy children was shown only for the toxic metals arsenic and cadmium, and the essential metals magnesium, chromium and copper.
As an interesting fact, we also made a separation within the group with ASD, namely the group of children with autism and the group of children with high-functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome. The study show that children with high-functioning autism had lower urinry concentrations of toxic and essential metals/creatinin compared to children with autism. The only exception was the concentration of cadmium/creatinin in the urine, which was higher in children with high-functional autism than in children with autism. A statistically significant difference between children with autism, children with high-functioning autism and a control group of healthy children was shown in the toxic metals aluminium and lead and essential metals chromium, manganese and copper, with a difference in all mentioned metals between groups of children with high-functioning autism and a control group of healthy children. However, no difference was demonstrated for any metal between the groups of children with autism and the control group of healthy children.
A statistically significant difference was also demonstrated between the children with high-functional autism and the children with autism for toxic metal lead and the essential metals chromium and copper.
Based on the reaults, we can conclude that certain statistically significant differences occurred between the group of children with ASD and the control group of healthy children. The reason for the differences may be in the influences of the environment, but to confirm it would be necessary to analyze environmental factors such as dietary habits, living environment, the course of pregnancy and other parameters in the environment.
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