Hypothesis

Aminoglycoside antibiotics and autism: a speculative hypothesis

Radmila Manev and Hari Manev

Department of Psychiatry, The Psychiatric Institute, The University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612, USA

author email corresponding author email

BMC Psychiatry 2001, 1:5doi:10.1186/1471-244X-1-5

Published:	10 October 2001

Abstract

Background

Recently, it has been suspected that there is a relationship between therapy with some antibiotics and the onset of autism; but even more curious, some children benefited transiently from a subsequent treatment with a different antibiotic. Here, we speculate how aminoglycoside antibiotics might be associated with autism.

Presentation

We hypothesize that aminoglycoside antibiotics could a) trigger the autism syndrome in susceptible infants by causing the stop codon readthrough, i.e., a misreading of the genetic code of a hypothetical critical gene, and/or b) improve autism symptoms by correcting the premature stop codon mutation in a hypothetical polymorphic gene linked to autism.

Testing

Investigate, retrospectively, whether a link exists between aminoglycoside use (which is not extensive in children) and the onset of autism symptoms (hypothesis "a"), or between amino glycoside use and improvement of these symptoms (hypothesis "b"). Whereas a prospective study to test hypothesis "a" is not ethically justifiable, a study could be designed to test hypothesis "b".

Implications

It should be stressed that at this stage no direct evidence supports our speculative hypothesis and that its main purpose is to initiate development of new ideas that, eventually, would improve our understanding of the pathobiology of autism.