1. islamic azad university,science and research branch, tehran 2. islamic azad university,science and research branch, tehran
Abstract
Introduction
Nowadays, the autoimmune and neurodevelopmental disease and disorders are affecting thousands of peoples. therefore, drug manufacturers are attempting to target the cause of these maladies. one the most important of these disorders which is not curable is autism spectrum disorders (asd). the asd impacts broad range of systems in human body such as gastrointestinal system, immune system, and neurological system. in recent decade, different etiological aspect of asd have been studies and many useful discoveries introduced. one of the important finding was linking autistic behaviors to immune system. on the other hand, the effect of sulforaphane (main substance of broccoli essential oil) in lowering the level of some of the cytokines such as il2, il6, and tnfa have been proven. therefore, we have designed a new experiment in which 20 autistic kids were divided to two different groups and the impact of broccoli diet on behavioral indicators of asd kids were investigated.
Methods
20 asd children with poor social skills and violent behaviors selected and divided to control and treatment group. the control group received 300 grams of broccoli on a daily base and for control group a normal diet with no broccoli was considered. every 30 day an aidos test were taken from each child and after 3 months the results were analyzed.
Results
The aidos test has been utilized to evaluate behavioral indicators of autistic children. analyzing the results after 3 months, 21% improvement on eye contact and 30% decrease of violent behaviors were observed.
Conclusion
The result of this study is suggesting that the increase of broccoli in daily diet of asd kids will improve their behavioral indicators. in future we will examine the molecular effect of sulforaphane of autistic kids and will try to determine the mechanism of this results.