Can leucovorin cure autism? Meet the moms determined to find out
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From ‘no words’ to the Pledge of Allegiance
The parents themselves provide more affecting testimony. Carolyn Connor’s son Mason was 1 when she realized something was amiss: “He wasn’t talking. No language. No words.”
When their pediatrician downplayed this lag in development as typical in boys, she and her husband began doing their own research, which led them to Frye. Three days after starting leucovorin, Mason spoke his first words.
Now 6, he continues to take the medication, and continues to thrive.
Beth Ann Kersse’s daughter was diagnosed with autism at age 3. “In her vocabulary she had about three or four words,” Kersse said in a video uploaded by Washington, D.C.-based Potomac Psychiatry.
“But she didn’t call me ‘Mom.’ She kind of would point at me,” she added.
That’s when Kersse and her husband began exploring leucovorin. Two years later, Kersse describes her almost 5-year-old daughter’s transformation as “incredible.”
“The other day she stood up and put her hand over her heart, and she recited the Pledge of Allegiance, and we were just like, OK … I didn’t know we knew that. … She’s able to have a full conversation; she can tell us how she’s feeling.”
Late last month, Nebraska pediatrician Dr. Phil Boucher posted a case study detailing how a 3.5-year-old autistic girl responded to leucovin treatment, citing texts from her mother reporting that she was “blown away” by the changes she observed:
She is starting to consistently look at people when they call her name. … She’s becoming more interested in her little sister. … She also has started taking some of the baby dolls that we have and has been covering them up with a blanket, giving them a kiss, and saying, “Night night.”
As Boucher is careful to point out, anecdotal success stories like these don’t prove the drug works. But to those experiencing the improvement firsthand, they’re a promising sign that a simple, inexpensive vitamin derivative can do what years of therapy can’t.
And if this promise does indeed bear fruit, leucovorin treatment will be the latest of many homegrown revolutions in medical care spearheaded by determined mothers and fathers unwilling to wait for consensus.
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