Identification of indolyl-3-acryloylglycine in the urine of people with autism

Autism is a lifelong pervasive developmental disorder that manifests as problems with communication, social skills and imagination. It affects 80000 people in the UK (data from the National Autistic Society, London 1997) and, at present, can only be diagnosed by reference to behavioural and psychological characteristics. For many years there has been interest in the analysis of body fluids from people with autism in the search for unusual correlates which could be used as markers for the disorder, and which would provide evidence for a physiological dysfunction (Panksepp 1979; Gillberg 1988; Adrien et al 1989; Knivsberg et al 1990; Shattock et al 1990). As a result of an ongoing programme in this laboratory, screening the urine from people with autism by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), it was noted that there was a particular peak present in all the chromatograms from the sample population (Mills et al 1998). This peak was often present in greatly increased concentrations, based on peak height and area by HPLC, compared with those found in controls. We have reported the isolation and structural elucidation of this compound.