Statutory warning: Injecting retro-viruses and heavy metals into infants is injurious to health. Now THAT label on vaccination vials would have caught my attention. If cigarette warnings read: In genetically susceptible individuals there may be a plausible connection between cancer and smoking, that would be largely ignored. It is really amazing how I consented to having "anything"  injected into my child without ever questioning or researching anything about the contents.

It is more amazing that the connection between chronic microbial infection, heavy metals and autism is not accepted by the mainstream physicians, although more and more parents are reporting dramatic improvements by treating for these conditions.

Is chelation an effective treatment for autism? I think thats the wrong question. First of all, we need to determine the set of kids who show mercury poisoning. Then we need a successful "pull" and evidence of actual excretion of heavy metals. And then we need to ask if the symptoms of autism improve after such excretion.

Mercury mining in the body seems hard. The natural detoxification process needs to be in place, agents such as DMPS need to escort the heavy metals out, and further, microbes, testosterone etc seem to play a role in making the extraction more difficult.

Now, there is good news on the first step, detecting mercury poisoning. We may finally have a real test. This is better than a post-provocation challenge test (after chelation) in kids that cannot detoxify easily in the first place. In a publication in "Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology" a team from France, R. Nataf et.al. published about a phenomenon that can be measured in a simple urine sample, that should be biomarker of heavy metal toxicity.

This is potentially big news.

For those of us trying to mine quicksilver in the brain, this could be a breakthrough in mercury exploration. Here in a non-toxicologist's lay-person terms, is the phenomenon they describe. Porphyrins, intermediaries in the heme synthesis pathway can be measured in urine samples as a measure of toxicity. The mechanism proceeds as follows:  A series of steps leads to heme, including a couple of compounds A and B (A = pentacarboxyporphyrinogen, B = coproporphyrinogen). Due to inhibition of this conversion process by heavy metals, excess A and B accumulate and appear in urine. The relationship between heavy metal inhibition of this process, and the urinary excretion of porphyrins is established by heavy metal removal by chelating agents and observing reduced porphyrin levels. The study reported involves 269 subjects in france, and establishes that children with autism diagnosis show higher porphyrin levels than control group. Interestingly, aspergers subjects did not show this phenomenon.

So now that we have a potential measurement tool, it will be interesting to see if it measures smaller changes in mercury toxicity accurately, and whether it can be used to measure progression through a detox protocol. In any case, this is good news. Details on this test are at  http://www.labbio.net/pages/index_vh_eng.htm

For technical information:

1. R. Nataf, Skorupka, Amet, Lam, Springbet, Lathe, "Porphyrinuria in childhood autistic disorder: Implications for environmental toxicity", Toxicity and Applied Pharmacology", Mar 2006.
2. J. Bradstreet, D Geier, J. Kartzinel, J. Adams, M. Geier, "A case-controlled study of Mercury Burden in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders", Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Summer 2003.