Lymes causing autism???

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I've had Lymes disease as a kid. When I was a little kid no one knew what was wrong with me (aside from the not speaking, obsession with spinning objects and hinges, head banging and hand flapping, that was autism). I stopped walking at three and reverted to crawling. It was assumed to be behavioral, only my mother noticed that my knee joints were swollen, red and hot to the touch. I also couldn't lift my arms for her to dress me because my shoulders were also swollen, red and hot to the touch. I was also always running a fever. Around the time I was diagnosed with autism I was also diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Supposedly it was so severe that I'd be wheelchair bound by the time I was school age. They put me on corticosteroids to control the inflammation, by limiting my body's inflammatory response (and also hampering my immune system)...so I got a nasty ear infection and a case of strep throat, and was put on antibiotics, and the steroids were stopped.

Ten days or so after being on the antibiotics I started walking again, I was able to play, and life my arms up for my mother to dress me. My joints weren't swollen and I seemed fine (aside from the for mentioned autistic behavior). This was 1986 and Lymes disease wasn't really known about yet (except for in Old Lyme Connecticut)

About a year later I had another relapse of the assumed rheumatoid arthritis, went back on steroids, got an infection, stopped the steroids, went on antibiotics, and got better. The doctors didn't realize it was the antibiotics, not the steroids making me better....This cycle continued evey other year or so until I was ten, when I somehow developed spinal menengitis.

The doctors were surprised to see spirochetes in my spinal fluid, rather than the usual meningococcal bacterial. The whole time I had Lymes, not RA. Now it had invaded my nervous system....however it wasn't as bad as it sounds....all those years of cycling through antibiotics weakened the Lymes and it was pretty easy to treat with some IV antibiotics.

I don't know how much of my autism was related to the Lymes. I know my father also has an ASD and is negative for Lymes. But some of the severe light sensitivity and some of the psychological issues I had as a child may not have been the autism, but rather the Lymes. The other autistic relatives I have don't have Lymes. However I made huge improvements a few years after I got rid of the Lymes.....however I still have autism, so I don't think the Lymes was mimicing autism, and I'm not too sure it caused it either, given some of my relatives also have ASD's who don't have Lymes.

It's not a road worth looking into unless he actually has other signs (definitive tests from a regular doctor, not an alternative one, would help too). I have a lot of medical conditions in addition to autism but Lyme is not one of them. There is a health fad at one point that said that a huge amount of incurable conditions were due to Lyme, but it wasn't true.

There are however many conditions that affect the whole body including the brain and that can cause autism. It doesn't mean that autism is a result of the other body parts functioning weirdly though and that's where a lot of crank theories go wrong.

What you said about handwriting -- two things come to mind. One is that I've heard of speech and hand control problems going together frequently, something about how people are wired up.

The other thing is have you read this post (that's a link)? Tony Attwood actually looks for loose joints when he is diagnosing his patients. And that post is about, among other things, how I used to think of handwriting problem as a fine motor control problem even though it really seemed out of step with some of my other skills, and then I found out it's my loose joints. Also some people can have different joints loose than others so what you want to look for is hand wrist and finger joints. When I handwrite without these finger splints then my thumbs pop out and my fingertips bend backwards, requiring more pressure to write, which in turn causes pain and hand fatigue very quickly (within seconds to minutes). When I was young I had no way to express the pain or fatigue and was dismissed as not trying. They noted I have an 'immature' grip but did not much about it.

So please read through that post, it's got more information than I can post here, and so often when I run into parents whose kids have handwriting problems they do have loose joints like I do, or even looser. Here's Andrea's page about hypermobility too, which contains more information. Be aware I was actually considered non-flexible by my gym teachers because their one flexibility test required (for accurate measurement) a normal length of arms and mine are much shorter than usual -- so just being considered non-flexible in one area doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Sorry to thread-hijack but I went through years of grief about my handwriting and want other kids not to when possible.

As far as I know, neurological damage and changes that can be caused by lyme-diseases are that at worst neurological disorders emerge that cause reflexes vanish, make motor difficulties appear, create general hyposensibility as well as, in the mildest form, a feeling numbness and pins and needles.

It might cause meningitis, inflammation of the spinal cord (Myelitis) which can go hand in hand with symptoms such as headaches, pain as well as the above mentioned motor difficulties/to loss of motor skills. It's also possible, that blood vessels and though apparently unlikely (?) inflammation of the muscles is caused my lyme-disease.

So... I just learnt there's a ton of symptoms besides the few I knew, but it seems to have nothing to do with autism.



Unrelated to the above:

Holy flaming crap! I looked at Ms. Baggs' site and my fingers do this exact same thing! I always thought it was normal, though.
I also tend to just drop objects I'm holding sometimes. Randomly. And my joints have been known to just "give out" and I'll fall down.

Also, I wonder if anyone else has a sensation of having cotton balls stuffed between their joints, particularly in their shoulders elbows and fingers. It's not pain, exactly, but it is uncomfortable enough to make it difficult for me to sit still.

I haven't read every posting on this thread yet, but lymes and Asperger are not very likely related if you ask me. I am not a doctor, but isn't it a fact that AS is more tested and diagnosed with kids? I mean not every kids that has AS had lymes disease is it? I am an adult and there are lots of other adults who know (self diagnosed or diagnosed by a doctor) they have Aspergers and know this because one (of several) clear and noticeable things was the development as a child was different from other kids. Just trying to think logical here.
I never had a tick bite when I was a kid and ticks in the Netherlands are only quite recently carrying and spreading around lymes (think something like within the las 5-8 years).

What I know about lymes is that it will damage your nerve system. I now a colleague of a friend ended up paralised and it took years for her to be able to kinda walk again. She didn't know she had lymes, so the disease had lots of time to develop. She is not an Asperger btw...
Lymes is commonly being spread by ticks, most of the time you get a round rash around the tick bite, but this is not always the case. Most of the time lymes starts with a feverish, flue like illness, which could very much be the flue but it's not going away... Fatigue or extreme tiredness might give a hint too.

I lived in an area with loads of ticks for some time and just within the lyme carrying tick border. My daily tick bites were around 15. They really liked me! I talked to my GP about it and he said I very much likely was infected but it would not make sense to take antibiotics if I keep on living in the area. You can get infected again if the antibiotics wore off and if I started the antibiotics within the incubation time... I decided to move out and then started antibiotics (10 day cure, this differs per doctors opinion, some say 5 day is okay), with calculating the incubation time.
I am an Aspie, but I am pretty sure I was this before the tick bites...

I really very much doubt that lymes disease can cause autism or AS. I think your GP was just human and had the wrong end of the stick here. It might be tempting for a doctor to create or have a theory about something than admitting he or she doesn't know.

Forgot to mention. I really hate ticks!

1600, I think that I would get a new doctor. This guy doesn't get it. He needs smacked. Did you smack him?

This is as idiotic as reading the book from the daughters of the Autism Speaks founder who says that autism is an advanced virus. Crap!

If he's that flexible -- then there's a huge, huge chance that he has some form of hypermobility syndrome. (And such things can also affect different parts of the body. Mine affects mostly joints as far as I know, but my mother's even affects organs, many of these things cause problems with connective tissue in areas other than just the joints, like the skin and organs too. As Andrea's page demonstrates with that icky thing she can do to her neck skin.)

abuend, I've looked at the links ... my reaction is to say, "that was creepy," but it probably isn't the right word. Yes, the writing photos look exactly like how my son hold's a pencil, and some of the other photos really strike a chord, as well.

Here is the thing that bugs me. My son has worked with an OT at school for 3 years. Why was this never mentioned? Or is it hidden in all the techno lingo in her reports that I just sort of scan (oops, it might be)? But shouldn't she have talked to me specifically about it, explaining what it is and how it affects him?

Question for you: the long term picture, the assumption the resource team (and I) have made, is that my son will switch to keyboarding as soon as he learns to type well enough. So far he agrees in concept, but is resisiting practicing. How is typing for those with this condition? Is it a real "answer," or also problematic?

Meanwhile, I'll make note of it to talk over with an OT.

Thanks.

Hey gang, there is a huge difference between "cause autism" and "cause autism like symptoms". i suggest you all re-read your posts with that in mind.....