AUTISM AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

Key words: Autism, Pathogenesis, Randomised controlled clinical trials

Autism is an oligogenic disease, the phenotipic expression of which depends on post-conceptional factors not yet identified. To identify these factors, as well as possible palliative treatments, is among the expectations of parents of autistic children and among the priorities of the entire research community. However, parents’ expectations are often in conflict with those of the research community, since, too often, they leave the door open to the so-called “hope therapies” which are not evidence-based. Hence, there is the need of pilot studies which can lead to long-term, randomised and well controlled studies, possibly based on a large number of cases, in order to give satisfactory questions with regard to autism.