Dan Rossignol, MD is Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia Department of Family Medicine and a Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!) physician. He received his Doctorate of Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia and completed his residency in family medicine at the University of Virginia. He is the father of two children with autism, ages five and three. One of his clinical interests is the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in neuro development disorders, including autism.
Dr. Rossignol and Lanier Rossignol authored the study entitled Hyperbaric oxygen therapy may improve symptoms in autistic children in Medical Hypotheses.
Hypoperfusion is not often talked about but has been studied extensively in autism. One study showed that typical children, when they have to pay attention to certain tasks, have increasedblood flow to the brain, whereas autistic children do not demonstrate this increased blood flow.
Another study showed that typical children when they listen to a tone or generate a sentence have increased blood flow to the brain while autistic children have the opposite decreased blood flow. One ultrasound study showed that when typical children receive an auditorystimulus, their cerebral arteries dilate and they have more blood flow to the brain, while autistic children have constriction of the same arteries and decreased blood flow to the brain.
There arealso numerous studies demonstrating that this decreased blood flow in autistic children is directly correlated to many of the core symptoms of autism. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) can help improve these symptoms in autistic children.
