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Brief Report: Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Clinical Trial

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Abstract

We sought to determine whether HBOT leads to parental reported behavioral changes and alterations in cytokines in children with ASD. Ten children completed 80 sessions of HBOT and all improved by 2 points on the clinician-rated CGI-I scale (much improved) as well as several parent-completed measures of behavior. The lack of a control group limits the ability to determine if improvements were related to HBOT. Enrolled children did not exhibit abnormal cytokine levels at baseline and no significant changes in mean cytokine levels were observed. Although this study was limited by the small sample size and by the variable nature of cytokines, we found no evidence that HBOT affects cytokine levels or that cytokine levels were associated with behavioral changes.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the families and children who participated in this study to help advance scientific research in autism. This work was supported by grants from the MIND Institute (Dr. Hendren) and Autism Speaks, the Higgins Family Foundation, The Emch Foundation, The Taube Foundation, NIH/NCRR UCSF-CTSI Grant Number UL1 RR024131 (Dr. Bent) and the C.H.E.R.I.S.H. Foundation (Edward Nemeth), which provided funding for all HBOT treatments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Stephen Bent & Robert L. Hendren

  2. Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Stephen Bent

  3. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Stephen Bent

  4. University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Kiah Bertoglio

  5. Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Paul Ashwood

  6. Clinical Hyperbaric Education and Research Institute for Synaptic Healing (C.H.E.R.I.S.H.) Foundation, Sacramento, CA, USA

    Edward Nemeth

  7. San Francisco VAMC, 111-A1, 4150 Clement St., San Francisco, CA, 94121, USA

    Stephen Bent

Authors
  1. Stephen Bent
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  2. Kiah Bertoglio
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  3. Paul Ashwood
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  4. Edward Nemeth
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  5. Robert L. Hendren
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephen Bent.

Additional information

Clinical Trial Registry: Pilot Study of the Effect of Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment on Behavioral and Biomarker Measures in Children With Autism (HBOT); NCT00584480; http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00584480.

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Bent, S., Bertoglio, K., Ashwood, P. et al. Brief Report: Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Clinical Trial. J Autism Dev Disord 42, 1127–1132 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1337-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1337-3

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