May 30 2012
Reporting Preliminary Findings
While scanning through recent science press releases I came across an interesting study looking at the use of a pharmaceutical grade antioxidant, N-Acetylcysteine (NAC), in the treatment of certain symptoms of autism. This is a small pilot study, but it did have a double-blind placebo controlled design. The press release reports:
During the 12-week trial, NAC treatment decreased irritability scores from 13.1 to 7.2 on the Aberrant Behavior Checklist, a widely used clinical scale for assessing irritability. The change is not as large as that seen in children taking antipsychotics. “But this is still a potentially valuable tool to have before jumping on these big guns,” Hardan said.
But concluded:
“This was a pilot study,” Hardan said. “Final conclusions cannot be made before we do a larger trial.”
I also noticed that two of the authors list significant conflicts of interest – patents on the use of NAC, and one has equity in the company that makes it. It occurred to me that a larger question than the efficacy of NAC for these autism symptoms is this – if this is a pilot study only and we should not base any firm conclusions on the results, then why the press release?
