Autism and Vitamin D

As previously reported:

Colin is a 7-year old boy living in the northeastern US with a long standing diagnosis of autism. Symptoms include temper tantrums, repetitive self-stimulatory behavior, impaired language, mood swings, fear of being alone, toileting problems, and impaired muscle strength. He spends a lot of time outdoors starting in the spring and his mother noticed a distinct seasonal variation in his symptoms in that he improved in the summer and regressed in the winter. A 25-hydroxy-vitamin D in April of 2008 was 25 ng/ml and obtained after he had begun to play outside.

Due to the seasonality of his symptoms the mother consulted me and I advised the mother to stop all products containing vitamin A including cod liver oil and begin Colin on 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day for two weeks followed by 2,000 IU per day in the form of powdered vitamin D dissolved in juice. Within a week of starting the vitamin D language began to return and he was no longer as fearful of being alone.

At the end of two weeks his language showed further improvement, he began to toilet himself, counted to 10 and knew the spelling of his name. After three weeks language continued to improve and some improvements were noted in his dysbiosis. After four weeks of vitamin D treatment, the mother noted improvements in muscle strength as well as continued improvements in language. The below email is a six month report.

John Cannell, MD
Vitamin D Council

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Hi John!

I had lab work performed on Colin - October 9, 2008 - his 25(OH)D level was 62 ng/ml (range 30-100) and his calcium was normal (9.8). This was with him on 3000 IUs per day for the last three months. You had said for him to take 4000 but I just wanted to see what would happen if we continued to do 3000 IUs.

Colin started school this year, we had previously home schooled him. He got into a really good school that requires a lot from the students. Colin is doing very well there. He mastered the first five sounds they taught him in less than 2 weeks (they do an intense reading/writing/language method called The Association Method). They said some kids can take 3 months to master 1 sound. He also had another IQ test performed recently. In July, he had a very difficult time attending to the testing and scored a 63 which put him in the MR category. However, he just did another IQ test on 9/26/08 and he scored an 83 on one and a 79 on another. This takes him out of the MR range and puts him into the low average intelligence range. It's great news and I believe he will continue to score higher and higher each year.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thank you.

J. P.