Mohammed Abdulfattah Aldajani
Dhahran Ahliyya School, Dhahran, SAUDI ARABIA
Autism and cryptogenic epilepsy are serious brain disorders that have a significant prevalence rate in Saudi Arabia. Both diseases lack diagnostic laboratory biomarkers and specific lines of treatment. Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite infecting one third of the world`s population, induces lipid metabolism alterations and possesses abilities to degrade branched-chain amino acids in the host. These altered metabolomics are similar to those incriminated in the pathogenesis of autism and epilepsy. The study`s aim is to examine associations between Toxoplasma infection and the development of autism and epilepsy as well as to evaluate a set of related biomarkers as risk predictors for both diseases. 30 autistic, 50 epileptic, and 51 control patients were put through clinical evaluation and blood tests for anti-Toxoplasma antibodies, adiponectin, lipoproteins and branched-chain amino acids. The results indicated a significant role of Toxoplasma infection in the pathogenesis of both autism and epilepsy with a higher positivity rate (50% and 54% in autism & epilepsy respectively) and significantly higher anti-Toxo IgG levels relatively to healthy controls. All biomarkers have undergone a significant decrease under the influence of toxoplasmosis in Toxoplasma-positive autistic and epileptic patients compared to either controls or Toxoplasma-negative autistics or epileptics. Through logistic regression analysis, sets of 6 and 9 biomarkers were proven significantly predictive of autism and epilepsy respectively for more than 75% of the cases. The results confirmed the suggested hypothesis paving the way for an infectious basis of autism and epilepsy in addition to introducing a set of biomarkers with a diagnostic predictive ability. Awards won at the 2013 ISEF Fourth Award of $500 - Medicine and Health Sciences