Drug touted by Trump admin. for autism shows promise for some symptoms

Watch Drug touted by Trump admin. for autism shows promise for some symptoms - Straight Arrow News on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00The Trump administration announced FDA approval for a drug that may help treat autistic children.

00:08The FDA will be updating the label of an existing drug to reflect

00:12potential benefits in reducing some autism symptoms.

00:17The drug is called lucovarin. It's a prescription version of falinic acid.

00:22It's been around for decades and is mostly used to help chemotherapy patients.

00:26So it's not a chemotherapy med, it's just a vitamin that replaces your folate level when it gets depleted by the medication.

00:32Research has shown many children with autism have an antibody that blocks normal folic acid receptors.

00:39However, this drug can get around that block and has shown some real improvements for children on the autism spectrum.

00:45Peer-reviewed literature has documented that up to 60% of folate-deficient children with ASD

00:51can have improved verbal communications if given lucovarin.

00:55The improvements that we tend to see are things like speech and social,

00:59which is kind of big because we don't really have any treatments that are approved to treat speech and social and autism.

01:05The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement to Straight Arrow News, reading in part,

01:09There is no single root cause of autism, and there is no single medication that will give every autistic child or adult what they need.

01:17Individualized plans, often including a combination of developmental, behavioral, educational, and social-relational strategies,

01:25can help improve outcomes that are meaningful to individuals and families.

01:29The Trump administration said that they plan to do more research on this drug and its impact on autism.

01:35For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan.

01:37If you want more on this story, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit san.com.