Lupron for Autism- Stay Away from it…

I had heard of Lupron being touted as a cure for autism, but until reading this four-page article in the Chicago Tribune, I had no idea how widespread its use had become. Quite honestly, I assumed that most parents had the common sense to walk away from something as risky and unproven as a drug created to produce chemical castration. Here’s how the article begins:

Desperate to help their autistic children, hundreds of parents nationwide are turning to an unproven and potentially damaging treatment: multiple high doses of a drug sometimes used to chemically castrate sex offenders.

The therapy is based on a theory, unsupported by mainstream medicine, that autism is caused by a harmful link between mercury and testosterone. Children with autism have too much of the hormone, according to the theory, and a drug called Lupron can fix that.

“Lupron is the miracle drug,” Dr. Mark Geier of Maryland said after meeting with an autistic patient in suburban Chicago.

The idea of Lupron as a miracle cure for autism seems to have arisen from a finding by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen that there is an association between autism and heightened exposure to testosterone in the womb. It’s important to note that Baron-Cohen absolutely repudiates the idea that Lupron should be used to treat autism:

“The idea of using it with vulnerable children with autism, who do not have a life-threatening disease and pose no danger to anyone, without a careful trial to determine the unwanted side effects or indeed any benefits, fills me with horror,” he said.

Bottom line: stay away from Lupron. Stay away from any risky intervention that is not absolutely proven – through replicated, peer-reviewed, blinded studies – to be effective. In fact, in the case of autism, I personally veer toward risk-free interventions whenever possible.