Can the placenta show chances of autism for the future of the child?

Another day, another mindless comment from someone. :-

"I'm tired of all this "my child is autistic" stuff. Several years ago it was "my child has ADHD." Look how well that turned out. I've seen kids who were diagnosed with autism look completely normal. "

This was a comment left by someone in response to an article published, that has had scientists looking into the placenta after the baby has been born, and finding certain 'markers' that could indicate that baby will go on to be diagnosed with autism - Placenta and Autism
This is the piece I read :-

Written by Mark Duell

An infant’s risk of developing autism could be determined by looking for problems in the placenta at birth, scientists revealed today.
Researchers at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and the University of California in Davis say their findings will allow for earlier diagnosis and treatment for the developmental disorder.
One in 100 Britons are estimated to have autism, while one out of 50 children are diagnosed with it in the U.S. each year - but this diagnosis is usually made when the children are aged three or four.

This causes problems because the best chance for intervention is when the brain is most responsive to treatment in the first year of life, according to the researchers at both universities.
Dr Harvey Kliman of the Yale School of Medicine and scientists at the MIND Institute of UC Davis have studied abnormal placental folds and abnormal cell growths known as trophoblast inclusions.

The scientists have found that these are key markers to identify newborns who are at risk for autism.
Dr Kliman and his team examined 117 placentas from infants of at-risk families - those with one or more previous children with autism. The at-risk placentas were compared to 100 control placentas.
The at-risk placentas had 15 trophoblast inclusions, while none of the control placentas had more than two, according to the findings published today in the Biological Psychiatry journal.

Dr Kliman said a placenta with four or more trophoblast inclusions suggests an infant will have a 97 per cent probability of being at risk for autism.

 

Until now the best early indication of autism risk has been family history – with couples having a child with autism being nine times more likely to have another child with the disorder.
Dr Kliman said: ‘Regrettably, couples without known genetic susceptibility must rely on identification of early signs or indicators that may not overtly manifest until the child’s second or third year of life.
‘I hope that diagnosing the risk of developing autism by examining the placenta at birth will become routine, and that the children who are shown to have increased numbers of trophoblast inclusions will have early interventions and an improved quality of life as a result of this test.

It is good that there is so much research into autism. Although this may not work out as accurately a diagnosis as hoped, at least there are people out there working hard on research.

As for the comment that person left, it sadly isn't a rare opinion. We just have to keep on educating the world whilst celebrating our children.

                             I made this little picture

Rosa Monckton writes "How human rights are putting the mentally disabled in deadly peril"

An advocator of children and adults with learning difficulties, Rosa Monckton, has written an article about the harsh reality some adults with a learning difficulty encounter.
The worry I have about J's future as an adult is always rattling around my head. What would happen to him if he lost all his family? One always hopes he would be placed in a loving and caring residential home, for the rest of his life, but as Ms Monckton rightly explains, the 'system' in this country is patchy, unreliable, and in some cases, downright irresponsible.

The link to her article on the Daily Mail website is Here
You can read the comments left by other readers on that link.


I have copied and pasted the article below as well.

Sex abuse... even murder: How human rights are putting the mentally disabled in deadly peril

By Rosa Monckton


Like a lot of men in their 50s, Mark was starting to experience a certain itchiness in his feet as he reflected on his life and identified certain areas with room for improvement.
Having lived in the same home since his teens, he wondered what it would be like to be elsewhere. In Buckingham Palace perhaps, with Mick Jagger and Cheryl Cole. Or maybe he could share a flat with Frank Sinatra?
Mark has Down’s Syndrome and, as charming as his suggestions are, his family knows that he doesn’t actually understand the implications of what he is saying.


He has lived happily in the same residential facility for his whole adult life. It was only following a disagreement with one of the other residents that he told his carer, in a fit of pique, that he wanted to move out.
His local authority is now trying to move him into what they call ‘Supported Living’ — that’s out in the community, with just two hours of support a day — because Mark’s carer told them unequivocally that if that’s what Mark wants, then that’s what he should get.
The social services team responsible for Mark held a meeting without any of his family being present, and have made it clear that they see this move as Mark’s choice.
His sister wrote to me after seeing my BBC1 documentary, Letting Go, last year, in which I highlighted the terrible problems facing vulnerable adults left to fend for themselves. Understandably, she was distraught at the implications for her brother.
‘He’d never survive,’ she said. ‘He needs constant supervision just to keep himself and his room clean.
‘He can’t cook, and has no understanding of money, time or the day-to-day realities of life. He lacks the mental capacity to make rational decisions about important issues concerning his care and wellbeing.
‘Basically, he would go off with anybody, drink Fanta all day long, and live in complete squalor.’
Mark’s sister is not alone. For these are very valid fears I am hearing from many other families of people with severe learning disabilities who find themselves cut loose — in the name of so-called human rights — the minute they reach adulthood.


The drive to force these vulnerable people out on their own leaves them exposed to abuse, exploitation and even murder.
This week, I am holding a seminar in the House of Commons with the solicitors Irwin Mitchell. Ministers and shadow ministers will be attending.
The speakers are mostly parents who will talk about the battles they face to get the right support for their children, who are often heartbreakingly naive even when they have technically become adults.
This is a subject very close to my heart, as my daughter Domenica, who has Down’s Syndrome, becomes an adult in June. She may have 18 candles on her cake, but I know, and everyone who loves her knows, that she is still a child — and will always remain one.
Her future is now our main concern as a family. Where will she live and how will she be looked after?
She wants to stay at home for ever, but people with Down’s Syndrome often live into their 50s and 60s, and we, her parents, will be long gone by then. The thought of her ‘out in the community’ gives me sleepless nights. She is, after all, an eternal innocent.  


My worries are compounded when I hear stories like that of Jane, a mother of two daughters, aged 18 and 19. Both girls have severe learning disabilities but are terribly strong-willed. Understandably, Jane wanted them always to live at home, but they decided they wanted to leave and strike out on their own.
Jane’s local authority placed the girls into hostels because, they said, it would have been against their ‘human rights’ to keep them at home. One of them, the elder daughter,  ended up 200 miles away, staying with a friend.
Jane did her best to keep an eye on the girls from afar, but within a few weeks the elder daughter was thrown out of her accommodation in the middle of the night for ‘anti-social behaviour’ and ended up in the local police station.
The younger daughter, meanwhile, ran away from the hostel where she was staying and turned up back at home — eight  months’ pregnant. Two weeks later, social services rang Jane to deliver more bad news: not only had her elder daughter got into a violent relationship, she too was pregnant.
Only after such terrible damage had been wreaked on their lives did social services admit that Jane’s daughters needed to come home.
Jane gave up her job and had to move to a larger house to accommodate her two daughters and, eventually, their babies.
After three months, a social services’ teen pregnancy team came to visit. Unbelievably, they concluded that Jane was doing too much for her daughters and said they should be living in state-sponsored mother-and-baby units. Once again, under the mantra of human rights, the girls were encouraged to leave home.
Both ended up living in hostels with their babies. Tragically, and predictably, the girls were unable to look after the babies, who were then removed by social services.
Jane has become the official guardian for one of her grand-children. For reasons she didn’t go into, the other child has now been adopted — a heartbreaking and totally avoidable situation for all.
Meanwhile, to Jane’s dismay, her daughters still live in chaos. But social services continue to insist they are capable of living alone.


I spoke to Jane recently after she had just been to visit one of the girls. ‘The place stank,’ she told me. ‘The toilet was blocked and overflowing; there was no food in the kitchen; there were filthy mattresses, with no bedding, on the floor — and two strange people asleep on them in the middle of the day.
‘My daughter is unwashed and she smells. It is clear that she is not capable of caring for herself.
‘Her flat is being used by local youths as a place to hang out and the police are always being called. She will have sex with anyone who is nice to her.
‘And yet I am being told that it is my daughters’ choice to live like this, although I, as their mother, know that they are not capable of making such a choice. They need proper looking after.’
Jane, meanwhile, has been forced to live on benefits. Not only is she looking after her granddaughter, but she has to visit her daughters nearly every day — a round trip of 25 miles — to take them food in a desperate attempt to keep some normality to their lives.
‘I am not allowed to make any decisions,’ she said. ‘It is against their “human rights”.
‘I am at my wits’ end. The girls need someone to help them. Someone who can make sure the washing up is done, that they have a bath, clean their hair, eat decent meals. Someone who can take care of their money and keep them safe. How can social services consider this “too much” support?’
All this trauma is caused by one simple fact of law: the Mental Capacity Act (2005), which assumes adults have mental capacity until proved otherwise. It was designed to protect elderly people, but has had dreadful consequences for people with learning disabilities.
Up to the age of 18, people with a learning disability are, like their peers, considered children. But after 18, state provision for people with learning disabilities treats them as ordinary adults, and as if they were as capable as the rest of us of making rational decisions. It has created a ridiculous and dangerous situation.
This transfer from child to adult social services for people with a learning disability is both terrible and pointless. Nothing changes. A lifelong learning disability is exactly that: from cradle to grave. Although they have reached the age of chronological adulthood, they are not really adults.


We need a policy that differentiates between physical and mental ability, and an acknowledgement that for people like Jane’s daughters — and indeed Domenica — their condition is not going to change.
All the forms that I have had to fill out, time and again, for my own daughter to receive the assistance she needs assume that the passage of time might have brought a change in her condition — which as everyone knows, is utterly ludicrous. Is there a cure for Down’s Syndrome that I have not been told about?
Aside from this, there is also a pervading ideology that everyone is equal, and that it is a ‘human right’ to live on your own and to make your own choices — even if you are desperately vulnerable.
Aristotle’s quote has never been more relevant: ‘The worst sort of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.’
Of course, the ideology of the ‘human right to live an  independent life’ is conveniently underpinned by the fact that it is cheaper for local authorities to have people out in the community rather than in a sheltered
residential setting. If people remain in residential care, the local authority pays the whole bill. But out in the community, the housing aspect of care is funded by central government.
This ill-informed mindset, driven by profit margins, only puts disabled people at risk. Free to roam the streets, surely we cannot be surprised that hate crime against the disabled is on the rise?
The isolation and loneliness of people with learning disabilities living in the community makes them vulnerable to people ‘befriending’ them — only for their new ‘friends’ to steal their benefits, sexually abuse them, and worse.
One of the speakers at the seminar I have organised will be Sue Hayter. Her daughter Gemma had a learning disability yet was put out in the community with no support. She was dirty and unkempt, had money stolen from her and was constantly sexually and physically abused.
After the documentary, Gemma’s sister wrote to me in despair, saying that she’d been to social services to complain, only to be told: ‘Who are you to tell your sister that she can’t live like this?’
A neighbour of Gemma’s said: ‘She wanted to be accepted so badly that she would put up  with anything.’
Gemma was attacked and murdered in 2011 by people she thought were her friends. When her body was found, she had more than 50 injuries and her head had been shaved. A few years before her murder, Gemma had been raped.
Sue told me: ‘I sometimes wonder whether she was conditioned to being abused. So many things have happened in the past that it makes you wonder if she thought it was normal for people to abuse her and take advantage of her.’
Even for those parents whose children remain at home, the worry never dissipates. I have received many letters and emails from parents in their 70s and 80s, confronting their own mortality and worrying themselves to an even earlier grave about their adult ‘children’ and where they will live.
Thankfully, Domenica still lives with us: a vulnerable little girl in the body of a young woman. Just watching her, I am constantly aghast at how anyone could ever consider her a competent adult, capable of safely leading an independent life.
Only last week, she went for a walk and got lost in the woods near our house. We have lived here since she was two, and she was still unable to find her  way home.  
After police searched the area on foot and by helicopter, she was found in the garden of a house about a mile away from where  we live.
She told me: ‘I thought it was our house, until I saw a slide in the garden. We don’t have a slide.’
How could she possibly ever live on her own? She is happy girl and dances through her days, but she knows now that she is different, and that there are things that she will never be able to do. She is frightened of becoming older.
As her 18th birthday approaches, she seeks constant reassurance that she will always live at home. A reassurance I wish with all my heart that I could give her.

Some names have been changed.

Autistic people in a Google search....

                I saw this photo today on a Facebook Group for autism.

Shocking, isn't it?

 

 

 

I tried it out for myself, and you can see the results on the screen shot I took.

 

             I then tried it by replacing the 'people' with children, and this is what I got....

There are no stored searches on my computer, so this is what Google threw up by itself.
There is concern from many that the original image is not real and has been photoshopped, but it seems odd that I have two totally different results from just changing one word.

Whatever the truth, it still remains that all autists, from every part of our world, should be loved and respected. It's a sad fact that we are a long way from it being actualised.


                                                      And remember this.....

 

Toilet Training a child with certain Special Needs

It took a long time to toilet train J. Due to his lack of communication, language, and understanding, he was around 5 years old when he finally accepted the toilet and used it for urination.

I did write a blog post about it here, so I won't go over how he finally just took to it.

As you can see from that post, opening his bowels was a whole different saga. I look back and wonder if my recent find pictured below would have been a bigger help.

With my youngest son, W, who has vision impairment, he too was scared of the toilet, more so because he couldn't 'see' it. Some parents transition their child from nappy to potty, but my preference is to teach the toilet habits and cut out the potty.
There are plenty of seat covers for children, that provide a safer seating experience, and there are also step stools for them to use.
My worry was, that the step stools were not very stable, and if he missed his footing he could fall - albeit not very far, but I was trying to minimise the fear factor for him, and did not want any avoidable

                            I came across this three in one seat, made by Keter.

 

It was easy to assemble - I am not a DIYer - and W was so excited about using it.

It provides him with handles to hold onto when climbing up or down, a secure step for resting his feet on, and a comfortable seat, that does not wobble about.

It's so easy to use that W is able to open and close it - it folds flat - and position it onto the adult seat.

I highly recommend this training seat. I bought mine from Argos for £16.99.

 

This link will take you to the Keter website - toilet-trainer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

              What a lovely thought for the future with my boys.

Four recent drawings J has done. He takes so long to perfect each one.

He takes time cutting them out as well.

The last one at the bottom, J drew at his school, and it was sent home in his book bag for me.

 

 

Genetic tests still not in

Well over a year ago I wrote a post about the genetic tests J was having.
He had the standard tests on the NHS, after a geneticist was convinced he had SMS - Smith Magenis Syndrome. But he was cleared of the 40,000 genetic tests - from one blood test - that were carried out by her.

Because of this, the geneticist referred us to the DDD study in Cambridge, UK. This is a private study, of a cross section of children, with an undiagnosed genetic condition.
The difference between these two studies is the amount of conditions they test for. The DDD study looks at around one million conditions, many more that the 40,000 on the NHS.

We still have not heard any results, but I have found out that a lot of others have not either, so I am not too concerned.

As I have always maintained, the emergence of a positive result to these tests would not change anything.
The two most important aspects for me are ; ensuring J does not have a condition that will impact on his life expectancy, and being assured I am not a carrier of a genetic condition that has bypassed my other two children, but for which they are carriers - passing on to their potential children. If so, they would be informed, and would be able to have genetic counselling with their partner.


This is the first post I wrote Blood Test and Gen App
Then an update Some Results
Final post  - Here

World Autism Awareness Day

Today is World Autism Awareness Day.

I love my boy with autism.

Autism has opened up a new world to me. A diagnosis is not the end, it is the beginning of a new way of thinking and believing. Cherishing life. Acceptance. Hope and love.

Autism - Educate. Dedicate. Love.