‘Parents and caregivers have long reported that when some autistic people run a fever from an infection, their autism-related symptoms ease for a while.

MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers , backed by $2.1 million in grants from the Marcus Foundation, want to work out the biology behind this “fever effect” and eventually mimic it as a therapy.

A decade of work in mice by neuroscientist Gloria Choi and immunologist Jun Huh points away from the heat itself. They traced the improvement to an immune-signaling molecule called IL-17a, which appears to calm overactive brain circuits during infection. Injecting it directly into the brains of affected mice improved their symptoms even without any fever.

“Although it isn’t actually triggered by the fever, per se, the ‘fever effect’ is real, and it provides us with an opportunity to develop therapies to mitigate symptoms of autism spectrum disorders,” said Choi. The team now plans a “biobank” of blood and stool samples from volunteers to hunt for the same markers in people.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)