Intravenous secretin for autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

What It Covers

This meta-analysis looks at Secretin.

The researchers also assessed whether secretin causes harm.

This is an updated version of their review of this topic originally published in 2005.

Insufficient data were available to conduct sensitivity or subgroup analyses to assess the impact of study quality, clinical differences in the intervention or clinically relevant differences between groups, such as age or presence of gastrointestinal symptoms.

Why It Was Studied

Randomised controlled trials of intravenous secretin compared to a placebo treatment in children or adults diagnosed with ASD, where at least one standardised outcome measure was reported.

Sixteen studies met the inclusion criteria but for two of these, conducted by Repligen, the only available multisite data were reported in press releases.

Who the Included Studies Covered

Records were limited to studies published since 1998 as this is when secretin was first proposed as a possible treatment for ASD.

How the Review Was Done

The researchers searched CENTRAL (2010 Issue 1), MEDLINE (1950 to January 2010), EMBASE (1980 to 2010 Week 2), PsycINFO (1806 to 2010 Week 2), CINAHL (1938 to January 2010), ERIC (1966 to January 2010), Sociological Abstracts (1952 to January 2010).

Sociofile and HealthStar were searched in March 2005 when this review was first published, but were not available for this update.

The researchers searched reference lists of trials and reviews; the researchers also contacted experts and trialists to find unpublished studies.

What Was Measured

Randomised controlled trials of intravenous secretin compared to a placebo treatment in children or adults diagnosed with ASD, where at least one standardised outcome measure was reported.

All outcome data from the other 14 trials were continuous.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Autistic Disorder, Behavior, Communication, Gastrointestinal Agents, Hormones, Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic and Secretin.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a meta-analysis of Secretin.

Its findings take up roughly 8 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2012 (The Cochrane database of systematic reviews), a journal based in England.

More context: the Secretin compound page, all human trials.