Can any of the symptoms of autism in SLOS be reversed?
Cholesterol supplementation has allowed some patients to sleep through the night for the first time and others to overcome aberrant behaviors, to learn to walk, to speak for the first time, and to become responsive sociable family members. Other improvements found after cholesterol supplementation included increased sociability, learning to walk or run, fewer infections, reduced irritability and head banging, improved growth, and increased alertness and muscle tone. Those SLOS persons with speech said they felt much better. Some of the improvements occurred after only a few days of supplementation. In a pilot study by Tierney and Kelley (reported in ref. 3), cholesterol therapy reduced the mean ADI-R social domain score of five 4- to 5-yearold SLOS children from 18.2 ± 2.8 to 6.8 ± 1.8, where a normal score is 0 and scores above 10 are judged to be consistent with autism.
