Adult deer tickWIKIMEDIA, SCOTT BAUER, USDAThe hypothesized link between autism and Lyme disease loses ground with a new study that found no evidence of an infection in patients with the social development disorder. The results, published today (April 30) in the Journal of the American Medical Association, imply that antibiotics against the Lyme disease pathogen—a popular new strategy for autism—will not ameliorate most patients’ symptoms.
“The data don’t address whether a single case of autism was ever caused by Lyme disease, but it rules out the suggestion that it does so with any frequency,” said Armin Alaedini, an immunologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York and an author on the study. “I think that for me, this is the end of looking into the link between autism and Lyme.”
In recent years, some doctors have anecdotally noted that many of their autism patients have Lyme disease. Two small studies listed in a booklet from a 2007 meeting of the Lyme-Induced Autism Foundation, a Corona, California-based organization that advocates an “eclectic healing approach,” reported that 1 in 5 autistic patients had the tick-borne disease. Websites on the topic now ...
