Gut microbiota of autistic and healthy children

Though human gut microbiota does not represent the main research area of our group, we can deal with such topic in a collaboration. A new paper on gut microbiota of autistic and healthy children is just one example. There were significant differences in gut microbiota of these two groups of children although it is difficult to decide whether this differences in gut microbiota were a cause or consequence of autism. We prefer the latter hypothesis, i.e. that changes in gut microbiota of autistic children are consequence and not cause of specific patterns in behavior of autistic children which may include particular food preference. However, even in this case, there is no reason why not to consider interventions that may lead to restauration of “autistic” microbiota to healthy one, being aware of the fact that this will likely be of rather small consequence for total behavioral status of autistic children.

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