Investigating pathogenesis and risk factors of autism and its impact on clinical outcomes in Autistic Egyptian Children

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the potential role of the gut microbiome in the development of autism. The gut microbiome refers to the trillions of microorganisms that live in the digestive tract, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi. These microorganisms play a crucial role in various physiological processes, including digestion, immune function, and brain development, beside that studies have shown that individuals with autism tend to have altered gut microbiomes compared to typically developing individuals. Specifically, they have been found to have lower levels of beneficial bacteria and higher levels of potentially harmful bacteria in their gut microbiomes. This study is a case control study design depending on pilot study of 20 participants divided into 10 control and 10 autistic patients. Our aim is to elucidate the changes in gut microbiome together with clinical variables in Egyptian autistic children and their possible correlation with the incidence and the severity of autism. As a primary objective is looking for clinical and microbiome risk factors correlated with the incidence and severity of autism as (prenatal factors, natal factors and post natal factors), meanwhile the Secondary Objectives is to detect other clinical risk factors.it gave us in autistic children the mean (±SD) age was 4.7 (±2.0) years, gestational age mean (±SD) was 38.2± (0.63) weeks, birth weight mean (±SD) was 2.99 (±0.46), and the mean (±SD) of CARS test was 36.95±4.65. Finally, there is correlation between some clinical risk factors as (GIT disturbance, Eating Carbohydrates was significant with P-value<0.001 between the two studied groups while eating protein between the levels of severity with p-value<0.05) to autism spectrum disorder (ASD)