Health - Resources and discussion for everything health-related

2596 readers

376 users here now

Health: physical and mental, individual and public.

Discussions, issues, resources, news, everything.

See the pinned post for a long list of other communities dedicated to health or specific diagnoses. The list is continuously updated.

Nothing here shall be taken as medical or any other kind of professional advice.

Commercial advertising is considered spam and not allowed. If you're not sure, contact mods to ask beforehand.

Linked videos without original description context by OP to initiate healthy, constructive discussions will be removed.

Regular rules of lemmy.world apply. Be civil.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Awa

WhoRoger

RoyalEngineering

Parents say son with autism was nonverbal until trying an off-label drug that treats chemo side effects (www.cbsnews.com)

submitted 16 hours ago by MicroWave to c/health

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Summary

Mason Connor, diagnosed with autism at 2.5 years old, was nonverbal until his parents discovered leucovorin, a folic acid-based drug used to counter chemotherapy side effects.

Within days of taking it, Mason spoke his first words. Dr. Richard Frye, a pediatric neurologist, believes leucovorin can help many autistic children but lacks FDA approval due to low profitability.

Nonprofit Every Cure advocates for repurposing existing drugs for new treatments.

Mason, now 5, is set to start mainstream kindergarten.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Dasus 3 points 4 hours ago

This headline isnt to be read as "autism can be cured" but that for this one instance of neuropsychiatric illness, what helped was essentially just a folic acid supplement. Not actually, but essentially.

Most autistic kids probably don't have the exact same condition and thus wouldn't necessarily (or even probably) be helped by the drug.