In regards to Jennifer Tow's response to Karen Lowell about Breastfeeding
and Autism:
"Finally, there is a doctor in Pennsylvania who stumbled onto a connection
between autism and vit A deficiency in the mothers. She noticed quite a few
of her patients (the moms) with night blindness had kids w/ autism. Anyway,
she and then another physician (a ped who heard about her experience) both
saw remarkable results with cod liver oil added to the children's diets."
Having first studied vitamin A deficiency in 1984 (before anyone knew that
vitamin A could reduce childhood mortality by 34% maternal mortality by 45%
among deficient populations) and spent the last seven years working at an
organization devoted primarily to vitamin A deficiency and other blinding
conditions, I found this post quite intriguing. Dr. Alfred Sommer, Dean of
Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health would love finding
another reason to proclaim the wonders of vitamin A.
Nevertheless I have some questions about this particular connection.
First, Dr. Louis Pizzarello has done some work (I'll have to ask him if
he's published this) on night blindness during pregnancy in the United
States (work prompted by his physician wife who became night blind during
her pregnancy). Unlike many developing countries, most of the night
blindness that occurs during pregnancy in the United States is due to a
myopic condition that resolves after delivery. In this case, if a mother
were night blind during pregnancy, almost anything you gave her could
appear to resolve the night blindness because it would go away on its own.
Its not clear in this case whether or not the mothers were actually tested
or treated for night blindness (e.g. via dark adaptometry, MRDR, serum
retinol, etc)
Second, if the connection between vitamin A deficiency and autism were
causal, one would expect to see much higher rates of autism in developing
countries where vitamin A deficiency is widespread. I'm not familiar enough
with the literature to know whether or not this is the case, or even
whether or not anyone has looked at this problem. My impression from living
and working in Africa, South America and Asia is that this is not the case,
but mere impressions and assumptions can often prove to be wrong by
research.
Third, given that the treatment was cod liver oil, I'm wondering if this
particular physician stumbled onto a different mechanism that she's
attributing to vitamin A. Could it really be the DHA in the cod's liver
oil that is improving the situation? This makes more sense to me. If the
moms were deficient in vitamin A, and presumably they could not be eating
much fish if they were deficiency, is it possible that the lack of DHA
during pregnancy contributed to or exacerbated the condition?
Finally, why didn't this physician give cod's liver oil to the moms since
vitamin A is transmitted through breast milk and if the mothers were truly
vitamin A deficient they would need it as well?
In any case, as the chair of my dissertation committee once said, British
sailors used limes to prevent scruvy long before we discovered vitamin C,
so we don't always need to know why in order to use an effective treatment.
Just what I need, another reason to spend time in the library as if I
hadn't already developed a huge list of intriguing topics to investigate
from Lactnet!
Susan Burger, PhD, MHS
former International Nutritionist
In training to become an LC
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