Brief Report: Low Rates of Herpesvirus Detection in Blood of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Controls.
Herpesvirus DNA is no more common in the blood of people with autism than in controls.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team drew blood from 225 people with autism and 235 without it.
They used PCR tests to look for herpesvirus DNA in every sample.
The goal was to see if the virus shows up more often in autism.
What they found
Only four autism samples and two control samples had the virus.
The difference is so small it could be chance.
No link between herpesvirus in blood and autism was found.
How this fits with other research
Ellingsen et al. (2014) also found no group difference when they tested sweet taste liking.
Tavassoli et al. (2012) got the same null result with smell thresholds.
Together these studies show that simple body tests often fail to split ASD from controls.
In contrast, Fan et al. (2009) got 92% accuracy using pupil light reflex.
The virus study adds another null mark, steering us toward better biomarkers like pupillometry.
Why it matters
You can stop worrying that herpes in blood explains your client’s autism.
Focus staff time on measures that really differ, like reflexes or EEG, not on routine virus screens.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Previous research indicates that infection, especially from viruses in the family Herpesviridae, may play a role in the etiology of some cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Using a case-control design and the polymerase chain reaction with site-specific primers, we screened newborn and childhood blood samples for the presence of eight human herpesviruses. Herpesvirus DNA was detected in 4 of 225 ASD individuals and 2 of 235 controls, with the most frequently detected virus being HHV-6B. Although this study does not detect a significant ASD-Herpesviridae association, it is limited by the use of site-specific primers. We suggest that new techniques using bioinformatics to search next-generation sequencing databases will be more revealing of possible ASD-virus associations.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2019 · doi:10.1007/s10803-018-3691-x