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Blood test for autism demonstrates accuracy in new study

Wednesday 20th June 2018
A new study has affirmed the accuracy of an innovative blood test for autism, highlighting the potential benefits of this new physiological testing method.
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Scientists have been able to confirm the potential effectiveness of a new blood test that could be used to aid the diagnosis of autism.

Researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have conducted a second trial that has highlighted the high accuracy of this new method, which represents the first physiological test for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The new methodology is based on big data research from 2017 that sought out patterns in metabolites relevant to two connected cellular pathways with suspected links to ASD. An initial trial of 149 people used information about these patterns to generate a predictive algorithm that correctly identified 96.1 per cent of all neurotypical participants and 97.6 per cent of the ASD cohort.

Following this study, the team sought to replicate the results using an independent dataset that included 22 of the 24 metabolites used to create the original predictive algorithm, an amount that was deemed to be sufficient for the test.

Assessing a new group of 154 children, the predictive algorithm correctly predicted autism with 88 per cent accuracy. This remains a high level of success, with the slight difference between the original accuracy rate and that of the new study attributed mostly to the unavailability of the two metabolites excluded from the second dataset.

Based on the promise this blood testing approach has shown so far, the team is now hoping to take their research forward, with the aim of making the tool available to clinicians in future.

Lead author Juergen Hahn, a professor and head of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Department of Biomedical Engineering, said: "We looked at groups of children with ASD independent from our previous study and had similar success. We are able to predict with 88 per cent accuracy whether children have autism. This is extremely promising."

Written by Martin Lambert

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