THE ROLE OF OXIDATIVE STRESS ON AUTISTIC BEHAVIOR

Atrium

Objective. Plasma levels of GSH/GSSG redox ratio are analyzed to assess their correlation to autism severity. Background. Recent studies are finding lower levels of glutathione in autistic patients, but are lacking behavioral data compared with glutathione levels. Methods. Autism subjects are selected based on the following inclusion criteria: age 3 to 5 years old, autism diagnosis, and no other medical conditions. Reduced glutathione plasma levels are quantified by isolating and lysing white blood cells from whole blood samples of each patient; absorbance values are used in order to obtain the derived GSH and GSSG concentrations. Eight different diagnostic tests are performed by clinical psychologists in order to assess their correlation to the GSH/GSSG redox ratio. Microsoft Excel and QI Macros 2013 programs were used to calculate variation, correlation coefficient, and p-value for each subset of data. Results. There is a statistically significant negative correlation of 65.7% for the gold standard, ADOS, overall test score (p=0.028); specifically, the subset of Reciprocal Social Interaction shows a significant 65% negative 69 correlation (p=0.03), and the subset of Imagination and Creativity shows a significant 62.6% negative correlation (p=0.039) to the GSH/GSSG redox ratio. Conclusion. It can be stated that there is an inverse relationship between GSH antioxidant levels and the overall severity of autistic behaviors, specifically in reciprocal social interaction and imagination and creativity subsets, but further participant enrollment is necessary. Grants. This study was funded by Immunotec® and HPD Research Grant #335732.