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A new test for autism...

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Double Retired
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05 Jan 2023, 12:48 pm

Yahoo!, attributed to NBC:

"A new test for autism hopes to help doctors diagnose before symptoms show"

Quote:
Researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind test for autism that they say can find markers of risk in a single strand of hair, an innovation that might help clinicians identify it in young children before they miss developmental milestones.

The test — which is still in the early stages of development by the startup LinusBio and a ways from federal approval — is a diagnostic aid, meant to assist clinicians in identifying autism but not to be relied on alone. Because hair catalogs a history of exposures to metals and other substances, the technology uses an algorithm to analyze it for patterns of particular metals the researchers say are associated with autism.
Quote:
The causes of autism remain mysterious, and LinusBio is entering an ongoing and heated debate over what roles a tangle of environmental and genetic factors may play. Researchers have discovered myriad risk factors associated with autism, including infections during pregnancy, air pollution and maternal stress. Some pollution from metals, which is known to cause neurodevelopmental problems, has been associated with it too.

“Those risk factors all function on a background of genetic risk,” said Heather Volk, an associate professor in the department of mental health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She added that in the past 15 years, more researchers have turned their attention to environmental factors.

:hmph: OK. So they don't know what causes Autism but they can shoot lasers at a single strand of hair to test for it?
:? And would speculated interventions have helped successful Autistics?


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ToughDiamond
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05 Jan 2023, 2:13 pm

It rather presupposes that autism is caused by metal exposure. I have my doubts about that. As for intervening before there's a problem, I think the wisest thing would be just to keep an eye on the client, certainly not to barge in with interventions. If it ain't broke......



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05 Jan 2023, 5:15 pm

A G R E E D !


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ASPartOfMe
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05 Jan 2023, 5:24 pm

Quote:
Arora and his team hope their technology could help young children, even newborns, receive early interventions for autism sooner than they can now.

“The problem with autism is it’s diagnosed at the age of 4 on average. By that time, so much brain development has already happened,” he said. “We want to enable early intervention.

Bolding=mine

In other words instead of conversion theory stop Autism before its natural start. Did anybody say ABA?


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Fern
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05 Jan 2023, 6:04 pm

Although they didn't say it directly, my money is on computer learning being to blame for this. -or rather, this journalist's struggle to understand and communicate how computer learning works. If I'm right, then it's a big fishing trip, not the type of a priori hypothesis testing many of us are most used to reading about.

My guess is it went something like this:
- Get analyzed hair sample data from known autistics and known allistics
- Train the algorithm on these datasets, telling it only who is and isn't autistic
- With each added sample the algorithm gets better and better at predicting whether the next hair was from an autistic person, till now they are at 81%
- The research team pops the hood on the machine learning algorithm and asks it which variable in the dataset was most important; it turns out that the quantity of certain metallic substances in hair was one of the most useful for predicting who had autism.
- The research team writes a paper that doesn't confuse correlation and causation
- They take it to the media.
- The media confuses correlation and causation.

Just a guess though. I feel like I keep seeing this kind of pattern.



autisticelders
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11 Jan 2023, 7:06 am

the author of this study has a history of focusing on the metal thing, and presupposing that it has to do with autism. Past studies done were all low number studies and aimed at proving his theory (poorly constructed study). There is a lot of "bad science" out there, the total number of people included in any of this series of studies (3) is less than 400, and proves nothing at all when looked at logically and from the standpoint of the way the "studies" are structured. Too bad media gets ahold of this stuff and touts it. Like mouse studies and cures for alzheimers, parkinsons, etc etc... some of this stuff is so far away from the predictions made of their usefulness or adapting for treatment for people... makes me sigh.


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