Dietary interventions could greatly improve quality of life for those with autism

A new study led by ASU Professor James Adams has shown that changes in diet can radically alter the lives of people with autism.

Adams leads an ASU research program that investigates the biological and medical dimensions of autism spectrum disorders. Published in March, the most recent study by Adams and his team looks at the ways diet can influence specific symptoms and general quality of life of those with autism.

They did this by changing the diets of 67 children and adults with ASD and following their progress over the course of a year by having them take an assortment of tests. The tests ranged from blood tests to look at different nutrition markers to muscle strength tests to nonverbal IQ tests. The idea was to combine many different dietary changes in a single study to measure the total effect of these changes by the end of the year.

They found that simply removing certain foods — especially those containing gluten, soy and casein, the main protein found in dairy — caused large improvements in non-verbal IQ test performance when paired with a multivitamin and a few other interventions, like epsom salt baths.

“Our study is complicated because we looked at six different treatments,” Adams said. “For each one of those treatments, we had previous research by our group or by other groups. … To some extent, our goal was to put all those treatments together and have a more comprehensive study.”

In addition to general improvements to health, researchers measured a seven-point increase in nonverbal IQ. Adams said this increase was unexpected even in their best-case scenarios. They also saw an 18-month increase in the average developmental age, which is the comprehensive metric for a person’s emotional, physical, cognitive and social age of development measured against the norm.

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