A Single Dose Reversed Autism Like Symptoms in Adult Mice…

A Single Dose Reversed Autism Like Symptoms in Adult Mice Within Just Two Hours Autism related traits linked to inflammation during pregnancy have generally been thought of as fixed by adulthood, the result of structural brain differences formed early in development. A new study published in Nature Communications challenges that assumption in a genuinely surprising way, showing that some of these functional changes may remain modifiable in the adult brain, at least in mice. UCLA researchers exposed pregnant mice to a mild inflammatory stimulus early in pregnancy, mild enough that the mothers themselves didn't become significantly ill. Their offspring later developed persistent brain and body inflammation, mild brain overgrowth, excessive activity in a cellular signalling pathway called mTOR, poorly organised communication between brain regions, and autism like behaviours that persisted into adulthood. Researchers gave these adult offspring a single dose of rapamycin, a drug already known to reduce mTOR pathway activity. Within about two hours, improvements appeared across nearly every measure examined. Neurons that had been overactive began firing more normally. Seizure susceptibility dropped. Brain regions that had been