Effectiveness of B12

I have done a fair share of research on the vitamin but would like to get your take on it? I came across a plethora of supplements from shots, nasal sprays, pills, lollipops and patches. What is the best form of ingestion? Naturally in meats and seafood or from supplements?

Cheers,

Blake

Hi Blake, and welcome to IAN.

From what I can find, there hasn't been a great deal of conclusive research on Vitamin B12 and autism as of yet. It looks like the basic "does it help?" question is still being explored, so I'm afraid I don't have any information about what form of B12 might be the most helpful.

In this article by French researchers, they discuss a number of hypotheses about autism, and list the notion that Vitamins B6 and B12 may be helpful because they address deficiencies people with autism have as one of them. See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19068339?dopt=abstract

There is not much more available about B6. One review of the research done on combined Vitamin B6 and magnesium as a treatment for autism concluded that: "Only three studies met the inclusion criteria of this review and of these only one study reported adequate data for analysis. Results were inconclusive and sample sizes were small. Therefore the use of vitamin B6 for improving the behaviour of individuals with autism cannot currently be supported. Further research using larger, well-designed trials is needed." See: http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab003497.html

I'm sorry not to have a better answer for you, but it appears there is not a robust scientific finding on this at this point.

Thank you Connie for the articles and your input!