SCIENTISTS in China recently discovered a link between certain gut bugs and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The team at the Chinese University of Hong Kong looked at the gut bugs of 1,627 children aged between one and 13, some of whom had ASD.
After controlling for additional factors including diet, medication, and comorbidity, they were able to identify 14 archaea (which are similar to bacteria), 51 bacteria, seven fungi, 18 viruses, 27 microbial genes and 12 metabolic pathways that were altered in kids with ASD.
Scientists then used artificial intelligence (AI) to determine if the presence of 31 different bugs or functions could predict whether a child had ASD, and found this had a higher diagnostic accuracy than just looking at one type of bug, such as bacteria.
The findings, which were published in Nature Microbiology, could be used to develop a test for ASD that looks at the composition of gut bugs in kids, the authors suggested.
While the relationship between the gut microbiome and ASD had been a subject of previous research, the role of other members in this part of the anatomy, as well as its function, had not been explored prior to this study. JM
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