NEW YORK, March 31

/PRNewswire/

A statistical study commissioned by MAT: Medicine for Autism Today projects that the population of children with special needs/learning disabilities will be growing at a rate three times faster than the general pediatric population by next year. This means nearly six (6) million children, or ten percent of the population between the ages of 5 and 19, will receive special assistance during their formative years and beyond. Autism is the fastest growing of these classifications, conservatively accounting for a 900% (nine hundred percent) increase in the ten year study period (1992 to 2001) according to US Department of Education data! It is now generally recognized that the incidence of autism has increased at least twenty-fold in the last decade.

"With such compelling data, it is time to focus attention and funding on what can only be called an epidemic," says Dr. Michael Goldberg, a pediatrician on the clinical teaching staff of UCLA and President of the NIDS Research Institute, an international panel of medical experts studying immune and brain function in children with autism and other neuro-cognitive dysfunctions. "If autism were purely behavioral or genetic, we would not be witnessing this dramatic rise in the number of cases, particularly those children that experience a period of normal development prior to the emergence of symptoms. It is scientifically impossible to have an epidemic of a developmental or genetic disorder of any type. Clearly something is very wrong here," he concludes.

There is strong anecdotal evidence that a large subset of children with "acquired" autism, where symptoms do not emerge until after the child's first birthday, suffer from a disease process that elevates their immune system to a dysfunctional level. "We are calling this epiphenomenon "NIDS" -- Neuro-Immune Dysfunction Syndromes," continues Goldberg. With sufficient resources, he says, it is entirely possible that medical treatments can be developed in time to help many of the more than 500,000 individuals currently diagnosed with autism, pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) and other related "neuro-immune" conditions.

"It is time to recognize that these children may be suffering from a potentially treatable medical disease and need our clinical research efforts now," says Dr. Jeffrey Galpin, Associate Professor at the University of Southern California and Infectious Disease specialist who has championed several therapies for severe neurological disease related to AIDS. "An increasing number of studies in national journals are linking the regulation of the immune system with nervous system diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and even Alzheimer's Disease. Cognitive function, memory, and fatigue may all be controlled by small molecule immune modulators. Current treatments need to be modified if we confirm that this finding applies to children with autism," added Galpin.

"The continued exploration of this NIDS theory and the potential etiologies linked to it, is a door we must walk through to supplement the current behavioral and genetic research on autism if we expect to change the future of this generation of children," concludes David Gregory, Executive Director of the NIDS Research Institute. "Right now, our only hurdle is funding and we hope the nation recognizes that we can change the future of these children if it responds as it has with other diseases like cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, Down's syndrome and SIDS, all of which are less prevalent than autism. The time is now!"

To support this effort, MAT: Medicine for Autism Today, a parent-sponsored support organization dedicated to identifying treatment options for autism, today announced its intent to merge with the NIDS Research Institute and established an immediate fund-raising goal of $750,000 to develop a scientifically-sound neuro-immune database for children with NIDS-Autism. MAT also plans to fund studies to evaluate the efficacy of immune modulating agents in the treatment of NIDS-Autism. Active discussions have already begun with several interested pharmaceutical companies.

Websites:  www.mat.org or www.nids.net

SPOKESPERSON BIOGRAPHY

Michael J. Goldberg, M.D.

Michael Goldberg, M.D.: Dr. Goldberg received his Medical Degree from UCLA and trained at LAC-USC Medical Center. He is the President of the NIDS Medical Advisory Board and is on the clinical teaching staff at both UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Hospitals. He has seventeen years experience in evaluating and treating children with disorders that fall within the evolving spectrum of "NIDS", including autism, ADD/ADHD and chronic fatigue syndrome. Dr. Goldberg possesses a patient panel of over 400 with varying NIDS conditions. This patient base has provided the NIDS Board with several preliminary findings relative to immune dysregulation and brain blood flow patterns through NeuroSpect analyses.