Why Are More Males Affected With Autism?
While there are many theories on this, I found the glutamate and immune activation connection to be the most interesting. Often you will hear children with autism have experienced some sort of trauma (prematurity, stroke, etc.) or substantial changes to immune function, leading to immune activation (vaccines, illness, and it is now linked that mothers immune activation can trigger immune activation within the fetus, and so on) that parents believe may have triggered or caused their autism. Both trauma and immune activation cause an increase in glutamate. “It was initially thought that autistic children had fewer glutamate [...]