Antidepressants May Prove Effective.

• Position: With autistic children - Brief Article

Many autistic children may suffer from a genetically linked depression that is treatable with antidepressants such as Prozac (fluoxetine). According to Robert DeLong, a pediatric neurologist at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C., about two-thirds of youngsters with the most common form of infantile autism actually have a treatable, genetically linked, early-onset form of severe depression.

Children with autism appear to be prisoners of their own minds because they are unable to learn the language or social skills necessary to get along in the world. The condition is a spectrum of disorders with similar symptoms. Those who develop autism, usually in the second year of life, lose the ability to interact with people or their environment and don't speak or use language, even though many have normal intelligence.

While some autism is caused by diseases or injury to certain areas of the developing brain, most cases have no known cause. Of these so-called idiopathic cases, 70% appear to be an inherited form of affective disorder, such as manic depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder. "These children show none of the cheerfulness or spontaneity of normal children. And they often have extreme mood swings, tantrums, and excessive fearfulness."

Several lines of evidence show a distinct subgroup of autistic youngsters who have a genetic disease that can be treated with anti-depressive medications. When researchers examine the brains of children with idiopathic autism, they find very low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin on the left side of the brain in the area responsible for language. Serotonin is important in influencing mood and is low in people with clinical depression. "In the developing brains of children, serotonin not only acts as a transmitter of information, but it is also an agent of development that influences growth in the brain. When serotonin levels in the left hemisphere of the brain don't reach a critical level in early childhood, one might expect to see the symptoms we see in autism: blunting of the child's cognitive, social, and emotional development."

Serotonin levels in the right hemisphere of most idiopathic...