Hyperbaric Oxygen for Autism: New Rossignol Literature Review Does Not Impress

In May we cheered Ahmad Ghanizadeh's new systematic review of the published clinical evidence on hyperbaric oxygen for autism. Ghanizadeh encouraged further study but found scant evidence to support practice. This month another paper, reviewing the same body of medical literature, and published in the same online open-source journal Medical Gas Research [doi:10.1186/2045-9912-2-16], arrives at a much more optimistic conclusion. The review and analysis was led by Dr Daniel A. Rossignol (pictured right). We are wholly unimpressed. To us this paper smells of wishful thinking and investigator bias. It's almost (but not quite) enough to make us ban Medical Gas Research from our journal club. Read the abstract or download the provisional PDF of the full article and decide for yourself. After exhaustive reading and reflecting, we have at long last completed our update to the HyperbaricLink autism page, now in press. Our writeup and commentary will fully reflect the weakness of the medical literature in this important area of research.