Landmark Study Gives More Evidence to the Mercury Autism Connection

A new study, “Biomarkers of Environmental Toxicity and Susceptibility in Autism” in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Neurological Sciences, confirms a causal link between sub acute mercury poisoning in children and their autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. The autism community reported that this study presents, “…some compelling evidence…consistent with the author’s theory that mercury exposure plays a role in autism.” This paper presents the first prospective, blinded cohort study to examine children diagnosed with an ASD using: urinary porphyrin profile analysis (UPPA) to assess the body-burden and physiological effects of their mercury, glutathione analysis to assess susceptibility to mercury poisoning, and Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) scores to measure ASD severity.

These evaluations established:

1. Non-chelated patients diagnosed with an ASD had UPPA profiles indicative of mercury poisoning that strongly correlated with ASD severity, measured using CARS scores.
2. Glutathione (a key biochemical in the body’s mercury detoxification pathway) was significantly lower in patients diagnosed with an ASD in comparison with its level in neurotypical controls.
3. Increasing mercury-poisoning severity, as indicated by the UPPA results, was associated with lower glutathione levels among the patients diagnosed with an ASD.

Based upon these findings, the researchers concluded,