Landmark Study: Mercury Poisoning Causes Autism

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PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release
October 10, 2008

CONTACTS:
CoMeD President [Rev. Lisa K. Sykes (Richmond, VA) 804-364-8426]
CoMeD Sci. Advisor [Dr. King (Lake Hiawatha, NJ) 973-263-4843]

LANDMARK STUDY FINDS: MERCURY POISONING CAUSES AUTISM

WASHINGTON, DC – New study, “Biomarkers of Environmental Toxicity and Susceptibility in Autism” in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Neurological Sciences1, confirms a causal link between subacute mercury poisoning in children and their autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. The autism community reported that this study presents, “…some compelling evidence…consistent with the author’s theory that mercury exposure plays a role in autism.”2

This paper3 presents the first prospective, blinded cohort study to examine children diagnosed with an ASD using: urinary porphyrin profile analysis (UPPA) to assess the body-burden and physiological effects of their mercury, glutathione analysis to assess susceptibility to mercury poisoning, and Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) scores to measure ASD severity.

These evaluations4 established:

• Non-chelated patients diagnosed with an ASD had UPPA profiles indicative of mercury poisoning that strongly correlated with ASD severity, measured using CARS scores.

• Glutathione (a key biochemical in the body’s mercury detoxification pathway) was significantly lower in patients diagnosed with an ASD in comparison with its level in neurotypical controls.

• Increasing mercury-poisoning severity, as indicated by the UPPA results, was associated with lower glutathione levels among the patients diagnosed with an ASD.

Based upon these findings, the researchers concluded, “ASDs may result from a combination of genetic/ biochemical susceptibilities in the form of a reduced ability to excrete mercury and/or increased environ-mental exposures at key developmental times.”

The Autism Research Institute, the non-profit CoMeD, Inc., and, through a grant from the Brenen Hornstein Autism Research & Education (BHARE) Foundation, the non-profit Institute of Chronic Illnesses, Inc. funded this research study.

Today, any parent, physician, or healthcare provider can easily confirm whether or not a non-chelated child diagnosed with an ASD is mercury poisoned by having UPPA testing run at LabCorp (CLIA-certified, test# 120980) or Laboratoire Philippe Auguste (ISO-certified, 119 Philippe Auguste Avenue, Paris, France 75011). Please, visit CoMeD’s web site, for information on how to order UPPA tests and full copies of some of the many published papers validating the UPPA test.

Your generous tax-free donations will help us to fund additional research, similar to the present study, to examine mercury’s links to autism and other illnesses, define the causal roles of mercury in the linked childhood and adult illnesses, and find appropriate curative therapies.

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To support the ongoing efforts of CoMeD, Inc. with your tax-deductible contributions, please use the PayPal link on CoMeD’s Internet website, http://www.Mercury-freeDrugs.org.  CoMeD , Inc. is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation that is actively engaged in legal, educational and scientific efforts to stop all use of mercury in medicine, and to ban the use of all mercury-containing medicines.

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1 Geier DA, Kern JK, Garver CR, Adams JB, Audhya T, Nataf R, Geier MR. Biomarkers of environmental toxicity and susceptibility in autism. J Neurol Sci. 2008 Sep 24. [Epub ahead of print].

2 Autism Vox Study

3 This new study involved a multi-national collaboration between researchers, including: David A. Geier, Janet K. Kern, PhD, RN, Carolyn Gavery, PhD, James B. Adams, PhD, Tapan Audhya, PhD, Robert Nataf, MD, and Mark R. Geier, MD, PhD, FABMG, FACE. These researchers have extensive research backgrounds in medicine, biochemistry and neuroscience, and include professors from the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas) and Arizona State University (Tempe).

4 Laboratoire Philippe Auguste and Vitamin Diagnostics performed biochemical testing; Dr. Kern conducted the CARS scoring.