the mellow tigger's musings

MDMA (3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is known on the street as either Ecstasy or E.  The effect that it has on humans (and rats apparently) is to activate oxytocin-containing neurons and increase oxytocin levels in blood plasma.  Oxytocin is associated with the ability to read social cues and to trust other people.  An increase in oxytocin activity produces the effect that gives MDMA its colloquial names of "love drug" or "cuddle drug".  Basically, it makes people very social and friendly.  I have read elsewhere that it can be especially effective on autistics.  I emailed last month with an autistic man outside the USA who confirmed its properties.  :) 

Which brings us to today's news headline.  I mentioned 1.5 years ago that there is a good search engine in New Zealand for finding epigenetic information. Even back then, it found a few hits on autism information. Today, though, there's news about a new discovery that might be statistically relevant enough to use as a screening tool for autism risk.

Researchers identified an autistic boy with a genetic deletion of the OXTR gene.  His brother, also autistic, still had the gene but they found that it was epigenetically methylated ("turned off").  They examined a total of 119 autistics.


So... epigenetics is already producing interesting and potentially useful data.  Go science!