Life Sci 2000 Aug 25;67(14):1667-82
Is there a basis for novel pharmacotherapy of autism?
Hunsinger DM, Nguyen T, Zebraski SE, Raffa RB.
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J Autism Dev Disord 2001 Feb;31(1):103-8
Brief report: case reports on naltrexone use in children with autism: controlled observations regarding benefits and practical issues of medication management.
Williams PG, Allard A, Sears L, Dalrymple N, Bloom AS.
I don't appear to have access to that last source so would be interested as to anyone who might have online access to it if they could give a brief summary.
Anyway from the first article they note that the hypothesis regarding autism and opiates is that increased endrogenous opiates make the autistic individuals less response to the rewarding effects of social stimuls. They claim that while naloxone doesn't appear to work that great effects minor improvements are noted.
This suggests to me that while the autistic children might have higher endrogenous opiate levels this probably isn't the cause of their disorder (though of course might naloxone also block this reward system?). Also I am sucpiscious as long time heroin addicts don't seem to have similar problems to autistic children. Nor does it explain the apparent inability of autistic children to understand lies and build a model of anothers internal belief structure (i.e. autistic children given a situation where an object is hidden while another person is away from the room don't seem to be able to comprehend that the other individual will think the object is somewhere other than the place they think it will be).
[ 05 July 2002: Message edited by: quale ]