A simple brain trace can identify autism in children as young as two years old, scientists believe.
A US team at Boston Children’s Hospital say EEG traces, which record electrical brain activity using scalp electrodes, could offer a diagnostic test for this complex condition.
EEG clearly distinguished children with autism from other peers in a trial involving nearly 1,000 children.
Experts say more work is needed to confirm the BMC Medicine study results.
Early detection
There are more than 500,000 people with autism in the UK.
Autism is a spectrum disorder, which means that it is not a single condition and will affect individuals in different ways.
Commonly, people with autism have trouble with social interaction and can appear locked in their own worlds.
It can be a difficult condition to diagnose and can go undetected for years.
The latest study found 33 specific EEG patterns that appeared to be linked to autism.
These patterns consistently spotted autism in children across a range of age groups, spanning from two to 12 years old.
Hallmark brain activity
The researchers repeated their analysis 10 times, splitting up their study group (children with a medical diagnosis of autism and children with no signs of autism) in different ways.
Around 90% of the time, the EEG patterns could correctly detect the children diagnosed with autism.
The Therapy Book
From aromatherapy to zero balancing and everything in between
For comprehensive information on more than 200 holistic health therapies in an easily understandable format, you can’t do better than The Therapy Book for Kindle, available here.
This e-book is easily searchable, uses plain language and is organised into easy-to-digest bite-sized chunks, so you will soon know …
what each therapy is
how each therapy works
what each therapy can be used for
whether the therapy is effective
whether there are any known side effects
To find out more, just click on the book below.
Read the rest of this article at BBC News
Please help us to continue supplying you with all the most up-to-date information on health and wellbeing – and also about how it is under attack. A small donation would make a huge difference to our research…Please give here.
vesicapublishing.com 