Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) recently made a surprising discovery for males that are afflicted with autism. Using cutting-edge imaging technology, the investigators found that the brains of young men with autism have low levels of a protein that appears to play a role in inflammation and metabolism.
Findings from the new study were published recently in Molecular Psychiatry. Interestingly, the current study was the first to use a new generation of PET “tracers” to examine the brains of people with autism.
The MGH researchers scanned the brains of 15 young adult males (average age, 24) with autism. The group included both high and low-functioning subjects with varying degrees of intellectual abilities.
The investigators hypothesized that the scans would show increased levels, or expression, of TSPO in subjects who have ASD. “To our surprise, that’s not what we saw,” noted Zurcher. Instead, the scans showed that the brains of males with ASD had lower levels of TSPO than those of the healthy subjects.
In fact, the men with the most severe symptoms of autism tended to have the lowest expression of TSPO. When the tests were repeated several months later, the pattern persisted. The brain regions found to have low expression of TSPO have previously been linked to autism in earlier studies and are believed to govern social and cognitive capacities such as processing of emotions, interpreting facial expressions, empathy, and relating to others. “We know these brain regions are involved in autism,” said Zurcher.
The researchers plan to study brains from deceased donors with the goal of determining which brain cells in people with ASD might experience mitochondrial dysfunction, which she said may well be occurring alongside neuroinflammation and other mechanisms to cause ASD. “Our study has generated new hypotheses that now need to be investigated, but there’s more work to be done,” Zurcher concluded.
