Childhood psychosis and urinary excretion of peptides and protein-associated peptide complexes.
Over half of autistic kids excrete a unique urinary peptide pattern not seen in typical or most other clinical groups.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team collected urine from kids with autism, other psychoses, and typical peers. They ran chromatography to spot peptide patterns unique to each group.
No pills or therapy were given. The goal was to see if a simple urine test could flag autism.
What they found
Over half of the autistic children showed a clear peptide peak. Only one in six kids with other psychoses had it, and none of the typical kids did.
The pattern was absent in zero controls, hinting it might serve as a biological red flag.
How this fits with other research
Burack et al. (2004) repeated the idea 22 years later and boosted hit rate to 77% by testing only prepubertal boys without severe learning disability. This refines, not rejects, the 1982 signal.
Rojahn et al. (2012) kept the urine hunt but swapped peptides for porphyrins and still saw a subgroup rise, yet Shandley et al. (2014) found no porphyrin lift at all. The clash fades when you note Kerrie tested unselected kids while J et al. focused on a narrower set—method, not biology, drives the split.
Feinstein et al. (1988) shows autistic kids also excrete odd catecholamine patterns, proving urine can hold many parallel biomarker leads.
Why it matters
You can’t diagnose autism with urine, but you can add a cheap lab slip to your assessment kit. If the peptide pattern shows up, it gives families one more objective data point to support clinical judgment and may guide deeper metabolic work-up.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Twenty-four infantile autistic children were compared with 12 children with other kinds of childhood psychoses, 5 children with so-called minimal brain dysfunction syndrome, 5 children with attention deficit disorder, 14 children with mental retardation, and 19 normal children with regard to chromatographic profiles of urinary products that give ultraviolet absorbency at 280 nm. Six main types of chromatographic patterns emerged. Fifty-four percent of the autistic children and 17% of the children with other psychoses showed a distinct pattern that was not seen in any other cases. Only 8% of the autistic children showed the "normal" pattern seen in 95% of the normal and 93% of the mentally retarded children without psychosis. The ultraviolet absorbency peaks of the chromatograms possibly correspond to peptides and protein-associated peptide complexes. It is argued that these products are probably at least partly of CNS origin.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1982 · doi:10.1007/BF01531369