Hindawi Publishing Corporation Autism Research and Treatment Volume 2012, Article ID 910946, 11 pages doi:10.1155/2012/910946 Review Article Is Autism a Member of a Family of Diseases Resulting from Genetic/Cultural Mismatches? Implications for Treatment and Prevention Staci D. Bilbo,1 John P. Jones,2 and William Parker2 1 Systems and Integrative Neuroscience Group, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27710, USA 2 Department of Surgery, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710, USA Correspondence should be addressed to William Parker, bparker@duke.edu Received 12 September 2011; Revised 18 January 2012; Accepted 10 April 2012 Academic Editor: Antonio M. Persico Copyright © 2012 Staci D. Bilbo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Several lines of evidence support the view that autism is a typical member of a large family of immune-related, noninfectious, chronic diseases associated with postindustrial society. This family of diseases includes a wide range of inﬂammatory, allergic, and autoimmune diseases and results from consequences of genetic/culture mismatches which profoundly destabilize the immune system. Principle among these consequences is depletion of important components, particularly helminths, from the ecosystem of the human body, the human biome. Autism shares a wide range of features in common with this family of diseases, including the contribution of genetics/epigenetics, the identiﬁcation of disease-inducing triggers, the apparent role of immunity in pathogenesis, high prevalence, complex etiologies and manifestations, and potentially some aspects of epidemiology. Fortunately, using available resources and technology, modern medicine has the potential to eﬀectively reconstitute the human biome, thus treating or even avoiding altogether the consequences of genetic/cultural mismatches which underpin this entire family of disease. Thus, if indeed autism is an epidemic of postindustrial society associated with immune hypersensitivity, we can expect that the disease is readily preventable. 1. Introduction: Autism as a Member of a Large Family of Postindustrial Epidemics Involving a Hyperimmune Response In this paper, we outline a paradigm that points toward autism as one disease among many other well-known diseases which all share a common origin and, most likely, a common prevention strategy [1]. These emerging, noninfectious diseases are all epidemics of postindustrial culture, which are absent in antiquity in any culture, and absent in present day developing cultures. Members of this family of disease are invariably associated with a hyperimmune response and can have a very high preva- lence in postindustrial populations, with prevalence often greater than 0.1% and sometimes greater than 1.0%. These hyperimmune-associated diseases include a wide range of allergic, autoimmune, and inﬂammatory diseases such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, hay fever, appendicitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, inﬂammatory bowel disease, asthma, celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, Graves’ disease, some types of eczema, and a wide range of food allergies. Here, based on a variety of evidence, we argue that autism is yet another member of this family of diseases, despite the slowness of the medical community to recognize it as such. Since the pathogenesis of at least one form of autism has been directly linked to autoantibody production [2], and since seven out of every eight cases of severe autism are associated with antineuronal antibodies in the serum [3], this idea has already been demonstrated, at least in part. Further, as described below, autism is associated with a wide range of immune abnormalities. Even though some children with autism appear to have “normal” immune systems, it is argued that adverse immune events early in development might lead to an autistic phenotype.