Hi. Guess we started something with the allergy to beef thread. To
answer Moira's questions quickly, yes my son apparently reacted to his
18 month DPT vaccine because a the first signs of a rapid severe
regression were apparent as soon as his fever subsided a few days later.
The explanation I've seen that seems to fit best is that he had a
pre-existing condition that the vaccine complicated: the incomplete
breakdown of peptides and the increased intestinal permeability problem,
and possibly a slow, overworked liver. After his DPT and language loss,
the doctor found persistent fluid in the middle ear which lasted 3
months (read: multiple courses of various antibiotics). By the end of
this period the child was nonverbal, self-abusive, severely autistic/MR,
and had fine motor problems.

While trying to make sense of what happened, I came across an article
which said that when "experimental allergic encephalomyelitis" was
created in a lab setting, the method of choice is to inject pertussis
vaccine into the spinal cord of lab animals.

At a conference where "opioid excess" theory was explained as it relates
to autism, the lecturer mentioned that a "leaky" blood-brain barrier
allowed the peptides from gluten and casein to interfere with normal
brain function.

Guess that's the role the DPT played in my son's condition. Probably an
allergic/autoimmune kind of reaction, I'm pretty foggy on the t-cell
thing. But he was prone to this to start with, and he's gotten worse.

He's on a gf/cf diet, except for the occasional slip up of forgetting to
keep the bread and cheese locked up. I haven't been able to convince my
diabetic husband, who doesn't cheat with sweets, to give up his bagels
and old cheddar. We try to eat as naturally as possible, though I didn't
know quite how far "possible" was until this list!

I'm learning a lot - thank you to everyone. Now back to the proper
topics- don't know what it is about vaccines that gets everyone's
adrenaline going (then again, guess I do).

Darlene