Trials on a water-retention drug hailed as a promising autism treatment have been halted.
Bumetanide was going through two stage three trials when researchers abandoned the trials.
Yehezkel Ben-Ari, president of Neurochlore, says biomarkers may be needed to identify who will respond to Bumetanide after clinical trials on the drug were halted
Results showed it performs no better than a placebo, or sugar pill, at treating the symptoms of autism.
A stage three trial can last between one and four years. The emphasis is on testing the effectiveness and safety of the drug.
Bumetanide is normally used to treat water retention.
Reaction from drug manufacturer
Servier and Neurochlore were the drugs companies sponsoring the clinical trials.
Professor Yehezkel Ben-Ari is the president of Neurochlore.
He insisted four other trials on Bumetanide had shown it was effective.
But he added that because of the wide variety found in autism a universal treatment “of all kids with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) is unlikely”.
Ben-Ari said it may be necessary to find “biomarkers”. The idea would be to identify a “subset” of people with autism who would benefit from Bumetanide.
Parent’s reaction
Dad Peter Lloyd-Thomas blogs about his experiences using Bumetanide to treat his 18-year-old autistic son Monty.
In a blog post he, too, wrote that there “may never be a unifying therapy for autism, one that benefits everyone”.
But Lloyd-Thomas believes that a “significant minority of those with severe autism” respond to Bumetanide. He thinks they “will experience a transformative benefit”.
Previous test results
The latest results follow other research suggesting Bumetanide is ineffective.
A study by a team of Dutch researchers at University Medical Centre (UMC), Utrecht, said the drug had ‘no superior effect’ on the social skills of autistic children trialled on it for 91 days.
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Published: 13 October 2021
