Serum thyroid-stimulating hormone and interleukin-8 levels in boys with autism spectrum disorder

Background: autism spectrum disorder (asd) affects approximately 1 in 68 children in the usa. an asd blood biomarker may enable early diagnosis and/or identification of new therapeutic targets. serum samples from asd and typically developing (td) boys (n = 30/group) were screened for differences in 110 proteins using a multiplex immunoassay. results: eleven proteins were found that together could confirm asd with modest accuracy using multiple training and test sets. two of the 11 proteins identified here were further tested using a different detection platform and with a larger sample of asd and td boys. the two proteins,thyroid-stimulating hormone (tsh) and interleukin-8 (il-8),have been previously identified as putative biomarkers for asd. tsh levels were significantly lower in asd boys,whereas il-8 levels were significantly elevated. the diagnostic accuracy for asd based upon tsh or il-8 levels alone varied from 74 to 76%,but using both proteins together,the diagnostic accuracy increased to 82%. in addition,tsh levels were negatively correlated with the autism diagnostic observation schedule subdomain scores. conclusions: these data suggest that a panel of proteins may be useful as a putative blood biomarker for asd. © 2017 the author(s).