Well no, what they're saying is it seems to be capable of reducing autism-related struggles and misbehavior, not that it can somehow remove autism. Truly removing autism in any meaningful way is probably impossible since the brain was trained with it since birth.
No, that appears to be the implication of this study, which frankly seems like such a large effect that I'm pretty skeptical! I'd say "where's the control group" except the claimed effect is so large that you kind of don't need one, if it's real:
> Prior to the study, 83% of participants had "severe" autism. Two years later, only 17% were rated as severe, 39% as mild or moderate, and incredibly, 44% were below the cut-off for mild ASD.
Emphasis mine. If you are below the cutoff for mild ASD you wouldn't be diagnosed at all.
That was the study without a control; for the placebo controlled study, they don't give the numbers, just say "statistically significant improvements" on several metrics.
(Without a control group, you have questions about how people of that age generally progress, and what other treatment/therapies they receive over those 2 years. The phase 1 trial was with children whose parents presumably sought ever possible way to help them, while the placebo controlled phase 2 was adults who may have plateaued.)
My reasing of the study is children with significant gut issues and diagnosed with autism see a significant reduction in symptoms when the gut issues are treated.
Which leads me to wonder if for some of these children is the root cause just gut issues.
If all they have figured out how to so is treat significant gut issues that sounds very promising.
> If you are below the cutoff for mild ASD you wouldn't be diagnosed at all.
That makes sense, since ASD is a disorder classification and is mainly relevant for treatment and benefits. Plenty of autistic people are not diagnosed with ASD.
The article certainly could do more to differentiate between the autistic spectrum itself and the diagnosis of ASD, but as long as you know not to conflate the two, it seems perfectly clear to me.
You want to land a substantial amount of, ahem, shit in there, since don't just want it to colonize one portion of the gut, and it's got quite a lot of competition.
So you would be talking a truly astonishing number of pills, I think, to compare to the volume you can manage with a tube.
WP suggests that it's about 100g (or 100000mg) of actual feces then mixed in a larger volume of saline or milk, and you'd probably need to have additional volume for assumed losses and whatever coating you think would work.
Good point, but shit seems to be made of a lot of stuff- ~75% water, undigested food and fiber, fats, inorganic matter... Bacteria seem to be about ~30% of the dry weight. So of those 100 grams, you'd get maybe 7/8 grams of bacteria? If so, these could possibly be delivered by a number of small capsules taken in the course of several days.
There really isn't. From the mouth is basically the same distance and it contains teeth and a tongue. Through the rectum is much much much farther through meters of intestine. Through the skin creates a surgical hole that's going to be difficult to keep sterile.