A study that found a gluten-free, casein-free diet doesn’t appear to improve behaviors or symptoms of autism needs to be done with a larger group to be certain the diet isn’t effective, a UMass Medical School faculty member told The Wall Street Journal.
Replicating the findings in a similarly high-quality study in a larger group of participants will be important to determine conclusively that the diet isn’t effective in children with autism, Linda G. Bandini, PhD, RD, associate professor of pediatrics, told The Wall Street Journal in the Sept. 14 article. The article focused on the results of the study, which was published this month in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Children with autism are so different from one another that it is difficult to generalize from the small study that the diet won’t work for any children who have autism, Dr. Bandini said.
Bandini is co-investigator on Health U, a program within the medical school’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center that aims to help overweight people ages 15 to 22 with intellectual disabilities lose weight through group and individual counseling. The program is one of two nutrition related pilot programs involving youths with disabilities at the Shriver Center. The other program, The Children's Mealtime Study, is examining the eating patterns and mealtime behaviors of children ages 3 to 8 with or without intellectual disabilities and developmental delays.
