We want to give one final thanks to our donors and ambassadors. Each supporter truly helped build this project into a successful campaign that will make a positive impact on children with ASD and gastrointestinal symptoms.

Our generous donors and ambassadors helped us surpass our initial goal of $150,000 and reach a final amount of $175,675! Fifty-three donors contributed to our cause, and we could not be more thankful for each person who took the time to share our mission or donate to our campaign.

The funds raised through this campaign will allow our research team to continue and expand our autism-probiotic study. For example, our GI fellow will characterize the mycobiome of children with and without ASD, identifying potential fungal (yeast) overgrowth.  

We currently have nearly half of the study population enrolled and we are excited to continue building on our research.

Thank you to all our friends, families, patients and community members who helped make this research possible. We are incredibly grateful for your support!

Thanks to everyone’s generous support we have reached our initial goal of $150,000, which will allow us to conduct a pilot trial of probiotic BB-12 + Lactobacillus GG for children with autism spectrum disorder! With just under 2 weeks remaining, we are now pursuing a goal of $200,000 to expand our investigation by including an evaluation of the fungi (mycobiome) in these children. This is a new research area, but many children with autism have been reported to have increased levels of fecal candida, a yeast species. We have a clinical research fellow, Jane Alookaran, MD, already dedicated to this component of the study. We intend to find whether the probiotic affects the level of yeast.

The additional funding to $200,000 would also give us the ability to recruit more children to our study beyond the original 30 that were proposed. We have now been able to screen 47 children and have enrolled 14 in the study!

The study has been constantly expanding with the number of children screened at 42 to date. Ten eligible children have now been enrolled and are actively on treatment. We are not able to say which group has improved on probiotics but we are seeing improvements in many of our children, both in behavior and gastrointestinal symptoms. 

Through our study we have met very dedicated families, and their children are simply amazing. We are incredibly honored by all the support from our community and patient families, which is making this research possible.

Our autism-probiotic study, which initially began as a pilot study to test its feasibility and potential impact, has shown exciting promise. Since enrolling our first patient in June 2016, we have expanded to add 9 more patients. Currently, we are collecting and analyzing data from these 10 patients that will grow our study. Your gift will enable us to transition into a large-scale research project that we hope will hold the key to more effective, gentler treatments for children with ASD and gastrointestinal symptoms.