Autism Changes Immune System

Although the brain disorder autism affects only a small fraction of the population – recent estimates suggest as few as two of every 1,000 children – the condition can alter life significantly for both its sufferers and their loved ones. Autistics have greater difficulty engaging in basic social interactions and exhibit greater attachment to the comfort of repetitive behavior, among other symptoms. Much research has focused on uncovering the roots of autism, and in particular identifying any biological or environmental factors that may "trigger" the condition in some children while leaving it dormant in others. To that end, a major new University of California study finds that the immune systems of autistic children tend to differ in recognizable ways from non-autistics' immune systems. Compared to children without autism, children diagnosed as autistic were shown to have an average of 20 percent more B cells and a whopping 40 percent more so-called "natural killer" cells in their blood. Researchers plan further studies to identify whether the presence of excess immune system cells indicates that autism develops as a response to some biological stimulus in early life.