Dear Todd,

Thanks so much for your kind and considered reply. Congratulations ofn your
son's progress. I believe removing gluten is so important. I did see a big
improvement when I went g/f and c/f with him. I have noticed more
sociability with the paleo diet.

Here is the latest from the Paleodiet list.

I also posted it to the Autism List.

Funny, no response from the Autism List  so far. Is everyone too busy
drugging their kids with Prozac??
____________________________________________________________________________
___________________

Dear List, Here is an excerpt from the PALEODIET list....

>  1. Autism and paleodiets
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date:    Mon, 30 Mar 1998 10:19:00 -0700
From:    Loren Cordain <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Autism and paleodiets

I would like to respond to Moira's post which indicated improvement in
symptoms in an Autistic child following adoption of a paleodiet.
        Autism in children is a neuro-developmental disorder
characterized by few or no language and imaginative skills,
repetitive-rocking and self-injurious behavior, and abnormal responses
to sensations, people, events and objects.   The cause of the syndrome
is unknown, but there is increasing evidence that it may be auto-immune
in nature.  Reed Warren's group (1) found that 58% of autistic children
maintained antibodies to myelin basic protein (a protein found in the
myelin sheaths of nerves and suspected of being the target protein [self
antigen] for T-lymphocytes in the autoimmune disease, Multiple
Sclerosis).   Additional support for the concept that Autism may be
autoimmune in nature comes from work showing that 46% of autistic
children maintain major histocompatibility complex (MHC) alleles
associated with the disease (2).   The function of the MHC is to  present
self and foreign peptides to circulating T-lymphocytes at the surface
of
all cells throughout the body.   Thus, if foreign peptides are =
presented by the MHC,   circulatingT-lymphocytes can mount an immune response on
the cell or cells which present, via the MHC, that foreign peptide and
destroy them.

        The MHC not only presents foreign peptides, but it also presents
peptides derived from the proteins of genes comprising the MHC itself.
The susceptiblity genes for autism are: DRB1*0404, DRB1*401 and
DRB1*0101 (2).   In a particular portion of these genes (the third
hypervariable region [HVR-3]), there is a common amino acid sequence
shared by all three genes.   This amino acid sequence is either QKRAA
(glutamine-lysine-arginine-arginine-alanine-alanine) or QRRAA.   Thus,
either the QKRAA amino acid motif or the QRRAA amino acid motif can be
presented to circulating T-lymphocytes.    This particular shared
epitope increases the susceptibility to a number of autoimmune =
diseases,
including rheumatoid arthritis (3).

Dear List, there is more to this article on next posting.....