The results of a new autism study were so surprising even one of the authors called it far- fetched, at least on the surface. If you tell someone youre treating autism with broccoli, they would think you are off your rocker, said Paul Talalay, who is head of the Laboratory for Molecular Pharmacology at Johns Hopkins University.
He and his collaborators announced today that when they gave a compound called sulforaphane, derived from broccoli, to a small group of severely to moderately autistic teenage boys and young men, there was a dramatic improvement in the subjects symptoms. They were calmer, more social and in some cases, more verbal.
This experiment was no long shot, however. It grew out of a long history involving the intersection of two well-developed courses of research.
Coming at it from one side was Talalay, who had been following his curiosity about cancer prevention and vegetables. From another angle came pediatric neurologist Andrew Zimmerman, who had been fascinated by anecdotal reports from parents that their autistic children improved during bouts of fever.
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The study was small, involving just 29 patients who got the compound and 15 on a placebo. The results were rejected by the New England Journal of Medicine, but accepted into a prestigious science journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
That suits the researchers fine, since they say the findings must be replicated before they would be of clinical use, and yet the paper reveals new insights into the physiological underpinnings of autism or autism spectrum disorder which affects about one in 68 people. The result implies these symptoms can be changed, said Zimmerman. They are not set in stone.
Talalay explained that his part of this line of inquiry started in the 1980s, when he was investigating cancer prevention then a rather radical and unexplored topic. (Talalay is now in his mid-80s and has spent 51 years doing research at Johns Hopkins.)
Experimental work at the time was showing that certain food preservatives known as BHA and BHT appeared to prevent cancer in animals. I asked the question, how does it work? The answer to that question, he said, is at the heart of this entire field of work.
The answer, he found, was that cells have evolved an intrinsic mechanism to protect themselves from inevitable damage carcinogenic chemicals, radiation, and damage that comes from the way animal cells use oxygen. We need oxygen for respiration but the process leaves byproducts called oxygen radicals, or free radicals, which damage our cells DNA. Talalay found that BHT and BHA amplified the production of enzymes that protect cells from this kind of degradation.
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Scientists Gain Autism Insight -- And Possible Treatment -- By Studying Broccoli