The role of immune dysfunction in the pathophysiology of autism

By Charity E. Onore, M. Careaga, P. Ashwood. Brain, behavior, and immunity, 2011

641 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a complex group of neurodevelopmental disorders encompassing impairments in communication, social interactions and restricted stereotypical behaviors. Although a link between altered immune responses and ASD was first recognized nearly 40 years ago, only recently has new evidence started to shed light on the complex multifaceted relationship between immune dysfunction and behavior in ASD. Neurobiological research in ASD has highlighted pathways involved in neural development, synapse plasticity, structural brain abnormalities, cognition and behavior. At the same time, several lines of evidence point to altered immune dysfunction in ASD that directly impacts some or all these neurological processes. Extensive alterations in immune function have now been described in both children and adults with ASD, including ongoing inflammation in brain specimens, elevated pro-inflammatory cytokine profiles in the CSF and blood, increased presence of brain-specific auto-antibodies and altered immune cell function. Furthermore, these dysfunctional immune responses are associated with increased impairments in behaviors characteristic of core features of ASD, in particular, deficits in social interactions and communication. This accumulating evidence suggests that immune processes play a key role in the pathophysiology of ASD. This review will discuss the current state of our knowledge of immune dysfunction in ASD, how these findings may impact on underlying neuro-immune mechanisms and implicate potential areas where the manipulation of the immune response could have an impact on behavior and immunity in ASD.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Education, Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/19f7662b5bb077f766298dc5bf80c4c86320fbb7

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Citations in the corpus

New evidences on the altered gut microbiota in autism spectrum disorders (2017, background): “an early immune activation with chronic inflammation and cytokine dysregulation in ASDs [19, 20], and it has been shown that systemic inflammation induced by”
The microbiota modulates gut physiology and behavioral abnormalities associated with autism (2013, neutral): “…behavioral, and neurological aspects of disease, though the contributions of environmental risk factors (Hallmayer et al., 2011), immune dysregulation (Onore et al., 2012), and additional peripheral disruptions (Kohane et al., 2012) in the pathogenesis of ASD have gained significant attention.”
Human Gut Microbiota from Autism Spectrum Disorder Promote Behavioral Symptoms in Mice (2019, neutral): “immune imbalance (Onore et al., 2012), further suggest microbiota involvement in ASD.”