Journal articles and presentations at scientific meetings were (and continue to be) an important conversation that each scientific community has with itself, to review new findings and ideas. It used to be that studies were published in print scientific journals that would largely be read by experts in the field. Relevant to my question above, the scientific community is now exposed to public scrutiny in a dramatic way that is very different from the pre-internet age. The news industry is desperately trying to adapt to the collapse of their traditional business model, for example. There are many positive aspects to the easy access to information provided by the internet, but it is a disruptive technology in many ways. In a broader context, we are currently going through an information revolution. It occurred to me that a larger question than the efficacy of NAC for these autism symptoms is this – if this is a pilot study only and we should not base any firm conclusions on the results, then why the press release? I also noticed that two of the authors list significant conflicts of interest – patents on the use of NAC, and one has equity in the company that makes it. “Final conclusions cannot be made before we do a larger trial.” “But this is still a potentially valuable tool to have before jumping on these big guns,” Hardan said. The change is not as large as that seen in children taking antipsychotics. The press release reports:ĭuring the 12-week trial, NAC treatment decreased irritability scores from 13.1 to 7.2 on the Aberrant Behavior Checklist, a widely used clinical scale for assessing irritability. This is a small pilot study, but it did have a double-blind placebo controlled design. While scanning through recent science press releases I came across an interesting study looking at the use of a pharmaceutical grade antioxidant, N-Acetylcysteine (NAC), in the treatment of certain symptoms of autism.
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