Kenneth Aitken: Dietary Interventions in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Why They Work When They do, Why They Don’t When They Don’t

Excerpt

This is a controversial book. Most of the book fits into the complementary and alternative medicine genre. Anecdotal reports and personal testimonies are central to this. Papers published in peer reviewed journals focussing on the scientific effectiveness of these various diets are extremely rare in this book. The gold standard of the random controlled trial is extremely rare in this book. One that I was already aware of is mentioned by Anne Marie Knivsberg et al. (2002) which is quoted as showing a positive effect for the casein free, gluten free diet in terms of “blind rated assessments of autistic traits, non-verbal cognitive level (IQ), motor functioning, and a range of parental report measures” (p. 117). Millward et al. (2008) in their Cochrane Review identified a total of two satisfactory papers in this area. One should note that a study attempting to establish some link between coeliac disease and autism was unable to show this link (Fitzgerald et al. 1999). These few random controlled trails cannot be ignored and I take them seriously. In addition some of my clinical experience over the past 35 years in having seen over 1,800 patients with autism spectrum disorders supports it. Nevertheless I still describe this diet to parents as experimental. There is also some scientific evidence for the exclusion of colourings and additives in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and some benefit for the use of Omega-3 oils in autism spectrum disorder. …