A chemical called sulforaphane derived from broccoli sprouts may help improve symptoms in some people with autism, a small new study suggests. 
 
 The study looked at 40 boys and men with autism, who were between ages 13 and 27. For 18 weeks, 26 of the participants received between 9 and 27 milligrams of sulforaphane daily (depending on their weight), while the remaining 14 participants received a placebo. 
 
 "We believe that this may be preliminary evidence for the first treatment for autism that improves symptoms by apparently correcting some of the underlying cellular problems," study author Dr. Paul Talalay, a professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in a statement. 
 
 Before the trial, the participants' caregivers and physicians assessed the individuals' autistic traits using two standard scales, with higher scores on each scale corresponding with lower abilities in verbal communication and social interactions. 
 
 At the end of the study, the average score of the participants who received sulforaphane decreased by 34 percent on one scale and 17 percent on the other scale. These participants showed improvements in behavior, such as having fewer bouts of irritability, a decrease in repetitive movements, and fewer problems with communication and motivation. Those who took the placebo experienced what the researchers called "minimal change," or a change of less than 3.3 percent, in their scores on the scales. [5 Things that Might Cause Autism] 
 
 The families, friends and medical staff reported they noticed behavior changes for half of the participants who were taking sulforaphane. These observers correctly guessed that these participants had been taking the extract and not the placebo, even though they were still blinded to which treatment the participants were receiving, said study author Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, now a professor of pediatric neurology at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. 
 
 The parents said that those participants were calmer and more socially interactive than before the start of the trial, whereas the staff said that the individuals' autistic symptoms were "much or very much improved" on the scales used in the study. The researchers also reported that some of the participants who had been taking sulforaphane looked the researchers in the eyes and shook their hands, which the participants had not done before the trial. 
 
 Some participants showed no improvement 
 
 Another four participants who had been taking sulforaphane also improved according to the scales used in the study, but neither the parents nor the researchers guessed that these individuals had been in the group taking the drug. 
 
 "This is by no means a 'cure,' but sulforaphane may ameliorate symptoms of autism," Zimmerman told Live Science. " 
 
 "But it's important to note that the improvements didn't affect everyone — about one-third had no improvement — and the study must be repeated in a larger group of adults and in children, something we're hoping to organize soon," Zimmerman said in a statement. 
 
 The autism scores of the patients who took the extract went back to their original values after the patients stopped taking the compound, Talalay said. 
 
 It would be very difficult to get the levels of sulforaphane used in the study just by eating large amounts of broccoli, Talalay warned. That's true for two major reasons: First, the levels of sulforaphane precursors, which are the compounds that are converted into active sulforaphane by the bacteria within the gut, are highly variable in different varieties of broccoli. The second is that people have very different levels of capacity to convert those precursors into active sulforaphane, he told Live Science. 
 
 The researchers also found that based onanother measure of autism symptoms, about half of the participants taking sulforaphane showed noticeable improvements in their social interactions, aberrant behaviors and verbal communication. In the placebo group, none of the participants showed any improvements in social interactions or verbal communication, and only 9 percent exhibited improvement in aberrant behaviors. 
 
 How does it work? 
 
 The causes of autism are not clear, but researchers have observed certain biochemical abnormalities that are often present in the cells of people with autism, the investigators said. For instance, people with autism frequently have high levels of oxidative stress, which is an imbalance in cells that can lead to problems such as inflammation and DNA damage. 
 
 Previous research has shown that sulforaphane may help improve the body's defense against oxidative stress. The compound may also strengthen what is called the "heat-shock response," which is a cascade of events that protects cells from the stress caused by high temperatures. The heat-shock response occurs, for instance, when a person has a fever. 
 
 Intriguingly, about one-half of parents of autistic kids report that their children's autism symptoms get better when the kids have fevers, Talalay said. It was because sulforaphane can also trigger a heat-shock response in cells that the researchers wanted to see if administering the compound might have the same effect on autism symptoms as fever often causes. 
 
 Sulforaphane may not have worked for everyone in the study because the causes of autism vary in different patients, and therefore, a given treatment may work for one patient but not others, said Dr. Thomas Frazier, the director of Cleveland Clinic's Autism School in Ohio. 
 
 "It is just an example of how there are different subgroups of autism," Frazier said told Live Science. 
 
 Frazier said that the study was promising, but he added that it needs to be redone in a more rigorous way. Future studies should use more-objective measures to assess sulforaphane's potential effect on symptoms of autism, rather than the subjective assessments of parents, he said. 
 
 The study is published today (Oct.13) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
 
 Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| A small study led by investigators at MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has found evidence that daily treatment with sulforaphane - a molecule found in foods such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage - may improve some symptoms of autism spectrum disorders. In their report being published online in PNAS Early Edition, the investigators describe how participants receiving a daily dose of sulforaphane showed improvement in both behavioral and communication assessments in as little as four weeks. The authors stress that the results of this pilot study - conducted at the MGHfC-affiliated Lurie Center for Autism - must be confirmed in larger investigations before any conclusions can be drawn about sulforaphane's therapeutic benefit. 
 
 "Over the years there have been several anecdotal reports that children with autism can have improvements in social interaction and sometimes language skills when they have a fever," explains Andrew Zimmerman, MD, a co-corresponding author of the current report who also published a 2007 paper documenting the fever effect. "We investigated what might be behind that on a cellular level and postulated that it results from fever's activation of the cellular stress response, in which protective cellular mechanisms that are usually held in reserve are turned on through activation of gene transcription." Affiliated with the MGHfC Department of Neurology, Zimmerman is now based at UMass Memorial Medical Center. 
 
 Sulforaphane was first isolated in the 1990s by Paul Talalay, MD - co-corresponding author of the PNAS Early Edition paper and now a professor of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at Johns Hopkins - and his group also found that the chemical supports key aspects of the cell stress response. Zimmerman, who was based at Hopkins when he published the fever paper, approached members of Talalay's team to propose investigating sulforaphane's possible benefits for treating autism. While the mechanism underlying autism and other disorders on the autism spectrum remain largely unknown, several molecular abnormalities - including some related to the cellular stress response - have been identified. After Zimmerman moved to MGHfC in 2010, the trial was initiated at the Lurie Center in Lexington, Mass. 
 
 The study enrolled 44 young men, ages 13 to 27, who had been diagnosed with moderate to severe autism spectrum disorder. Participants were randomly assigned to a daily dose of either sulforaphane - extracted from broccoli sprouts - or a placebo, with neither investigators, participants nor their caregivers knowing who was receiving the study drug. Participants were assessed using standardized measurements of behavior and social interaction - some completed by caregivers, some by study staff - at the outset of the study and at 4, 10 and 18 weeks after treatment began. Treatment was discontinued after 18 weeks, and additional assessments of 22 participants were conducted 4 weeks later. 
 
 Study lead author Kanwaljit Singh, MD, MPH - of MGHfC, the Lurie Center and UMass - says that among the 40 participants who returned for at least one evaluation, the average scores for each of the assessments were significantly better for the 26 participants receiving sulforaphane than for the 14 who received a placebo. Even at the 4-week visit, some caregivers reported a noticeable behavioral improvement, and by the end of the study period, both study staff and family members correctly guessed the assignments of many participants. Overall, 17 of the 26 participants who received sulforaphane were judged by their caregivers to have improvements in behavior, social interaction and calmness while on active treatment. 
 
 After 18 weeks of treatment, the average scores on two assessments - the Aberrant Behavior Checklist and Social Responsiveness Scale - of those who received sulforaphane had decreased 34 and 17 percent, respectively - indicating improvement in factors such as irritability, lethargy, repetitive movements, hyperactivity, communication, motivation and mannerisms. Assessments using the Clinical Global Impression scale indicated that 46 percent of sulforaphane recipients exhibited noticeable improvement in social interaction, 54 percent in aberrant behaviors, and 42 percent in verbal communication. Most but not all of the improvements had disappeared by the 22-week reassessment, supporting the probability that changes had been the result of sulforaphane treatment. 
 
 "When we broke the code that revealed who was receiving sulforaphane and who got the placebo, the results weren't surprising to us, since the improvements were so noticeable," says Zimmerman, now a professor of Pediatric Neurology at UMass. "The improvements seen on the Social Responsiveness Scale were particularly remarkable, and I've been told this is the first time that any statistically significant improvement on the SRS has been seen for a drug study in autism spectrum disorder. 
 
 "But it's important to note that the improvements didn't affect everyone - about one third had no improvement - and the study must be repeated in a larger group of adults and in children, something we're hoping to organize soon," he adds. "Ultimately we need to get at the biology underlying the effects we have seen and study it at a cellular level. I think that will be done, and I hope it will teach us a lot about this still poorly understood disorder." 
 
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 Additional co-authors of the PNAS study are Susan Connors, MD, MGHfC, Eric Macklin, PhD, MGH Biostatistics; and Kirby Smith and Jed Fahey, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The study was supported by grants from the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, the Hussman Foundation, the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Foundation, the Agnes Gund Foundation, the N of One Foundation and the Brassica Foundation for Chemoprotection Research.
– A chemical found in veggies like broccoli may help cut down on symptoms in people with autism, a study finds. With the help of parents and caregivers, researchers assigned autism "scores" to 44 males with the disorder, ages 13 to 27; higher numbers on two different scales were linked to more severe symptoms. Twenty-six subjects received the chemical, called sulforaphane, for 18 weeks, while others got a placebo. The scores of who took sulforaphane dropped by 34% or 17%, depending on which scale was used, LiveScience reports. They showed, for instance, less irritability and less trouble communicating. In 17 of the participants, changes were noticeable enough that family and medical workers were able to guess that they were on the real treatment rather than the placebo. Approximately a third of subjects showed no improvement. "This is by no means a 'cure,' but sulforaphane may ameliorate symptoms of autism," a researcher says. The study follows reports that kids with autism show fewer symptoms when they have a fever, he says; sulforaphane can have an effect on cells that mimics what's seen in a fever. In addition to broccoli, sulforaphane is found in cabbage and cauliflower, a press release notes. But just eating tons of the vegetables wouldn't likely produce the same results, researchers say. Studies have shown a 30% increase in the disorder in just two years.