Sleep Disorder, Gastrointestinal Problems and Behaviour Problems Seen in Autism Spectrum Disorder Children and Yoga as Therapy: A Descriptive Review

Treatment with the traditional Chinese medicine BuYang HuanWu Tang induces alterations that normalize the microbiome in ASD patients

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are prevalent neurobiological conditions with complicated causes worldwide. Increasing researcher awareness of ASD and accumulated evidence suggest that the development of ASD may be strongly linked to the dysbiosis of the gut microbiota. In addition, most of the current studies have compared autistic children and neurotypical children or have compared ASD patients before and after antibiotic treatment. Treatment of autism with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has increasingly been promoted, but the relationship between its efficacy and intestinal flora has rarely been reported. Under the premise that treatment with the TCM BuYang HuanWu Tang is effective, we conducted a comparative bioinformatics analysis to identify the overall changes in gut microbiota in relation to ASD by comparing the intestinal flora before and after treatment with TCM and contrasting the intestinal flora with that of healthy controls. At the phylum level, Proteobacteria showed a significant increase in children with ASD, which may be a signature of dysbiosis in the gut microbiota. At the genus level, Blautia, Coprococcus 1, the Lachnospiraceae family, and the Ruminococcaceae family were found at the lowest levels of relative abundance in children with ASD, whereas the abundances of Escherichia-Shigella, Klebsiella, and Flavonifractor were significantly increased compared with those in the healthy control group. In sum, this study characterized the alterations of the intestinal microbiome in children with ASD and its normalization after TCM treatment (TCMT), which may provide novel insights into the diagnosis and therapy of ASD.

Tracking the Brain State Transition Process of Dynamic Function Connectivity Based on Resting State fMRI

BOLD-fMRI technology provides a good foundation for the research of human brain dynamic functional connectivity and brain state analysis. However, due to the complexity of brain function connectivity and the high dimensionality expression of brain dynamic attributions, more research studies are focusing on tracking the time-varying characteristics through the transition between different brain states. The transition process is considered to occur instantaneously at some special time point in the above research studies, whereas our work found the brain state transition may be completed in a time section gradually rather than instantaneously. In this paper, a brain state conversion rate model is constructed to observe the procedure of brain state transition trend at each time point, and the state change can be observed by the values of conversion rate. According to the results, the transition of status always lasts for a few time points, and a brain state network model with both steady state and transition state is presented. Network topological overlap coefficient is built to analyze the features of time-varying networks. With this method, some common regular patterns of time-varying characteristics can be observed strongly in healthy children but not in the autism children. This distinct can help us to distinguish children with autism from healthy children.

Efficacy of Structured Yoga Intervention for Sleep, Gastrointestinal and Behaviour Problems of ASD Children: An Exploratory Study

INTRODUCTION

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neuro developmental disorder which appears at early childhood age between 18 and 36 months. Apart from behaviour problems ASD children also suffer from sleep and Gastrointestinal (GI) problems. Major behaviour problems of ASD children are lack of social communication and interaction, less attention span, repetitive and restrictive behaviour, lack of eye to eye contact, aggressive and self-injurious behaviours, sensory integration problems, motor problems, deficiency in academic activities, anxiety and depression etc. Our hypothesis is that structured yoga intervention will brings significant changes in the problems of ASD children.

AIM

The aim of this study was to find out efficacy of structured yoga intervention for sleep problems, gastrointestinal problems and behaviour problems of ASD children.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

It was an exploratory study with pre-test and post-test control design. Three sets of questionnaires having 61 questions developed by researchers were used to collect data pre and post yoga intervention. Questionnaires were based on three problematic areas of ASD children as mentioned above and were administered to parents by teachers under the supervision of researcher and clinical psychologists. Experimental group was given yoga intervention for a period of 90 days and control group continued with school curriculum.

RESULTS

Both children and parents participated in this intervention. Significant changes were seen post yoga intervention in three areas of problems as mentioned above. Statistical analysis also showed significance value of 0.001 in the result.

CONCLUSION

Structured yoga intervention can be conducted for a large group of ASD children with parent's involvement. Yoga can be used as alternative therapy to reduce the severity of symptoms of ASD children.