If someone told you a drug based on vitamin B9 aka folic acid - used to help chemotherapy patients deal with side effects - has been found to help children with autism improve their speech, or even speak for the first time, would you think it a joke? It could be true.
The Daily Mail (U.K.) reports preliminary research suggesting many children with autism have a genetic defect that makes it difficult to uptake folic acid from the diet, and somehow that lack interferes with the brain's speech center.
The "why" of all this is only imperfectly understood at this point, and those being so treated are doing it "off label." I hope future double blind studies show this inexpensive drug to be efficacious for at least some subset of autistic children. Speech, after all, is a big part of what makes us human.
