Promising results from an autism research study

I wanted to share our latest findings of a qigong massage intervention for young children with autism published this month in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy (http://tinyurl.com/lwr8tx or http://www.qsti.org/article4.html).

The article presents a randomized controlled study evaluating the effect of a 5-month intervention directed at improving sensory and self- regulation in 46 children with autism under six years of age. The intervention, Qigong Sensory Training (QST) is a qigong massage intervention based in Chinese Medicine. It is 2-pronged: trainers train parents to give their child a daily qigong massage, as well as working with the children directly twenty times over five months. Forty six children were randomly assigned to treatment and wait-list control groups. Outcomes were evaluated by teachers (blind to group) and parents

· Children receiving Qigong massage from their parents (15 minutes a day for five months), and trained therapists (20 times) had a marked decrease in autistic behavior and significant improvement in social and language skills, compared to a control group receiving no treatment

· Teachers blind to treatment group, identified treated children as having improved behavior (p<.003) and social/language skills (p< .01); moderate effect sizes. Parent ratings confirmed the teacher data with large effect sizes.

· Ten months after the therapy was conducted, 85% of the parents were still giving the massage, and children in the treatment group retained the gains made while in treatment..

This study is the most recent in a 9-year research stream and proposes that a sensory and self-regulatory impairment is primary in autism and that autistic behavior and delays in social/language skills are secondary. The model receives preliminary support from high correlations between change scores in sensory impairment and measures of autism.

Limitations of this study include small numbers and medium-term; treatment data need to be collected on a much larger number of children over a longer period of time.

Thank you for the information on this study, kgab.

It is truly fascinating how much sensory issues can play a role, with children on the spectrum often both over-sensitive (hypersensitive) and under-sensitive (hyposensitive) to a variety of things, from noise to touch to lights. I have heard many parents and therapists swear by various sensory-focused models, like massage or Sensory Integration Therapy.

I will be very interested to see how this research progresses. If these findings are confirmed, it would certainly be valuable to know that such a non-invasive technique could be of such great help.

This is so interesting, because when I took my son with Asperger's to OT when he was little, he was very undersensitive - he used to go up and crash into people because he was seeking "sensory input" they said, to help him regulate himself.

Anyway, massage is one of the things we began to do to help him when he was getting "flippy" and it really helped. They also had us dogpile him, the whole family, or wrap him up in a blanket like a burrito - which was fun and also seemed to help him be much calmer after.