Slide 25:
So, at this point, whether you call this ADHD, quiet ADD, "autistic
syndrome / spectrum," what we hope to do is turn this into a medical diagnosis for a
large group of these children. The term we are going to try to use is called NIDS. It
stands for Neuro-Immune Dysfunction Syndromes. Under that, we hopefully will be able to
group the kids with Autistic/PDD symptoms, kids with ADHD symptoms, kids with chronic
fatigue symptoms, but create a diagnosis that is appropriately a medical disorder.
This phenomenon is linked to an immune dysfunction basis. One of the
things that has struck me as this has evolved over the years, is how many psychiatric
diseases are we one day going to one day understand are really physiologic/organic. These
children have always been thought of as developmental or behavioral. Again, whether you
talk ADHD, you talk autism, you think about adults with depression, you think about
children with OCD. Well, thankfully, the NIH now is talking about OCD as neuroimmune. What
we’re going to find as our knowledge of the brain expands, is that a large number of
disorders that we felt were psychiatric are actually going to have a physiologic basis to
them.
The trouble is this. I became involved in this in 1982 when my wife
became ill, as many of you know. I have watched this unfold for approximately 16 to 17
years now. I have screamed at how many adults are bedridden and not being helped; how many
adults, their IQ’s and brains are not working. But what is at this point my bias as a
pediatrician, if the adults have not been helped in 15 to 17 years, how long do your
children have before we help them?
