Arizona researchers pioneer autism urine screening targeting gut bacteria

PHOENIX - A breakthrough in autism research in the Valley is offering incredible new hope to families. A Phoenix-based company is looking into the connection between the gut and the brain, and researchers say it is completely changing the narrative.

What we know:

It's a simple urine test, but researchers say its impact is massive. A Valley family says this scientific breakthrough did not just provide answers for their autistic son, but rewrote his entire future.

At 17 years old, Payton Humphrey spends his free time playing piano. He also loves watching and creating movies.

"My favorite movies are Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo. All of the Pixar movies except Cars 2," Humphrey said.

Keeping active is just as important to him.

"My favorite activity is walking on the treadmill," Humphrey said.

His mom remembers a time when simple moments like these seemed completely out of reach.

"He said very few words. He was considered non-verbal," Jolynn Price Rojas, Humphrey's mom, said. "He would need a high level of support, behavioral therapy. Payton was still in a diaper at 5 and a half at that point."

Humphrey was diagnosed with autism when he was six years old.

"His behavior started to change, his reactions to noise started to change, and we started to see symptoms that we now know were autism," Price Rojas said.

Dig deeper:

When Humphrey turned 11, Price Rojas met Arizona State University professor Dr. James Adams at the Autism Walk, where she learned more about how the gut and the brain connect.

"It was the first time in my life I was seeing the connection between gut, brain and Payton," Price Rojas said.

It was a connection that would ultimately begin to change Humphrey's eating habits.

"He was only eating three things. It was potatoes, pancakes, and dairy. And saying that out loud, I’m almost embarrassed, but that’s all he would eat at the time," Price Rojas said.

With the help of Adams, Price Rojas began to introduce supplements into Humphrey's diet. Suddenly, he began to try new foods, something that experts say can be a big milestone for a child with autism.

"Food aversion is very common," Price Rojas said. "When you limit food, you limit going out, and you limit social outings so it’s one more way to shut yourself in."

Then last year, Adams introduced Humphrey and his family to a new screening for autism which tests urine samples for high levels of gut bacteria or yeast. Research shows that 90% of children with autism have gut bacteria or yeast infections.

"Those chemicals interfere with serotonin and dopamine, two very important neurotransmitters in the brain, and we think are contributing a lot to those symptoms," Adams, who serves as ASU professor and Autism Diagnostics Lab president, said.

Big picture view:

Leading the research at a brand-new lab in Phoenix, Adams explains that if the root cause of the symptoms can be pinpointed, treatments can actively be attempted.

"This test is revolutionary in that way. We are now telling you: you have a gut infection, we’re telling you the type of gut infection, and how severe that gut infection is, so that you can then follow up and see if your treatments are able to help with that," Adams said.

A diagnosis that might take years to make has the potential to be caught earlier.

"With our test, we can screen children as young as two years old to see if they are at risk of autism so that they can be diagnosed much earlier, get treatments much earlier, and have an outcome that's much better," Adams said.

It's a screening process that Price Rojas says changed Humphrey's life, because that is when they learned he had a yeast infection and allergies to dairy and gluten.

"So we treated the yeast. Remarkable. Within a week, rashes that no one could answer went away," Price Rojas said. "His stimming had stopped. Like stopped. The screaming, the agitated by noise, us needing to control room situations. He was ok with it."

As they continued supplements and treating the yeast infection, his family were not the only ones noticing improvements.

"Payton’s first two evaluations, up until he was 12 years old, were extreme level three autism. He had ADHD and every diagnosis you can put behind it," Price Rojas said. "This last year, Payton went from a level three to a level one evaluation. It’s unheard of."

Why you should care:

For the researchers involved, this breakthrough is about much more than just science.

"I dream that if I had a test like this 30 years ago, when my daughter was diagnosed, she could have had an earlier diagnosis, and it could have saved us decades of treatment for her," Adams said.

"My son is 14, and he is severely affected by autism spectrum disorder. He’s non-verbal, and he is prone to violence and aggression, and I just don’t want anybody else to go through this if we can help it," Dr. Christina Flynn, lead author of the study, said. "If we could have identified that he had a bacterial infection at two instead of at 14, then we could have probably saved him a lot of tummy troubles and hopefully a lot of his autism symptoms."

This screening test was the backbone of Flynn's PhD dissertation, and now she works directly alongside Adams. Her research started with a personal mission to drive change.

"When a doctor tells you there’s nothing we can do, they tell you there’s supportive therapies, but just to take him home and don’t really expect much to change, it’s very frustrating. And I was a mechanical and aero spacing engineering masters student actually, when I gave birth to him, so I knew there might be a way I could help because I had a strong chemistry background," Flynn said.

‘His future is bright now’

Humphrey's family says this screening paved a new path for his future.

"We’re able to be social and to travel. We didn’t travel for years and Payton just went on a week's journey with horseback riding and river rafting and no special accommodations were needed to be made, which is the first time ever in his life," Price Rojas said. "At some point, he’s going to go to college. We will start with community college, at this point. But six months ago, I wasn’t even ready to say that, so his future is bright now."

For a boy once locked in silence, Humphrey is changing his tune.

"There is hope and there’s science backed behind it that can prove that, through these remarkable findings with this Analutos test, there is a different level of hope for special needs," Price Rojas said.