Potential biochemical markers for infantile autism.

Biochemical markers are crucial to the development of early diagnosis of infantile autism. The blood concentrations of neuroanalytes epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin were elevated in autistic subjects (n = 13) as compared to normal controls (n = 10). Autistic subjects had peptide patterns (peaks I-V, Sephadex G-25) that were different from those of normal controls. Methionine-enkephalin has been tentatively identified from fraction I of autistic subjects by HPLC as one of a large number of peptides that appears to be elevated. The HPLC chromatographic patterns of fraction V from all autistic subjects show a peak with retention time of 7.6 min. The HPLC of control urine fraction V revealed no comparable peaks.