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closeNeed More information on the Participants
Posted by tmcdonald on 27 Feb 2018 at 14:44 GMT
This method may be able to distinguish between ASD and non-ASD/Developmentally-Delayed individuals. A question remains whether it can distinguish between ASD and other developmentally delayed or mental health populations. Given the wide heterogeneity of ASD characteristics and the frequent co-morbidity of ASD with other DD and mental health populations, is it possible these other populations share similar constellations of metabolites?
This is an important question because the concern with diagnosis isn't whether the child is experiencing challenges, but whether these challenges are specifically due to ASD, or not. Additionally, if the metabolism profiles are vastly similar to the profiles of other developmental and mental health disabilities, then we may be no closer to understanding the nature of what separates ASD from these other disabilities (again, "cleaving the meatloaf at the joints").
However, I laud the authors on their work. Regardless of whether these metabolite profiles can distinguish ASD from other disabilities or not, the consistent profile of these metabolites may increase our ability to eventually provide targeted and individualized treatment.
RE: Need More information on the Participants
juergenhahn replied to tmcdonald on 27 Feb 2018 at 15:44 GMT
You bring up some excellent points and I agree with most of them. Some of this will have to be addressed in future work as the data are not available at this point in time but it is something that is either being worked on or in the planning stages (for example, we are interested in investigating if we can see signatures of different comorbidities of ASD in the metabolite concentrations; the investigation of including children with non-ASD related developmental delays in the study is also something that is considered).