Early screening for neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism is important to ensure children have the support they need to gain the essential skills for daily life. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all children be screened for developmental delays, with additional screening for those who are preterm or have a low birth weight.
However, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has called for more research into the effectiveness of current autism screening practices. Primarily based on milestone checklists and symptoms, autism diagnoses also currently rely on observations of behavior that often manifests after crucial developmental stages have passed.
Researchers and clinicians are working to develop simple, reliable tools that could identify early signs or risk factors of a condition before symptoms are obvious. While early screening can lead to the risk of overdiagnosis, understanding a child’s developmental needs can help guide families toward resources that address those needs sooner.
We are researchers who study the role the microbiome plays in a variety of conditions, such as mental illness, autoimmunity, obesity, preterm birth and others. In our recently published research on Swedish children, we found that microbes and the metabolites they produce in the guts of infants – both found in poop and cord blood – could help screen for a child’s risk of neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism. And these differences can be detected as early as birth or within the first year of life. These markers were evident, on average, over a decade before the children were diagnosed.
The sooner a child’s needs are identified, the sooner they can be met.
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Microbes as biomarkers
Biomarkers are biological indicators – such as genes, proteins or metabolites in blood, stool or other types of samples – that signal the presence of a condition at a certain point in time. There are no known biomarkers for autism. Efforts to find biomarkers have been largely hindered by the fact that autism has many potential pathways that lead to it, and researchers tend to ignore how these causes may work together as a whole.
One potential biomarker for neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism are gut microbes. The connection between the gut and brain, or the gut-brain axis, is an area of considerable interest among scientists. Gut microbes play significant roles in health, including in immunity, neurotransmitter balance, digestive health and much more.
A lot of work has been done around mapping what a “typical” microbiome looks like based on age and organ system. Researchers have shown that the microbiome is personalized enough that it can distinguish two people or two households even better than genetics, with differences in colonization starting very early in life.
The microbiome undergoes immense changes during childhood. It shapes and…
