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Maryland offers "The New Directions Waiver" as a means of self-directing state and federal Medicaid dollars for individuals who qualify for supports due to their disability.

This offers the disabled individual the opportunity to use those dollars to best meet their own unique needs. However, it comes with the responsibility to create a plan, a budget, and find your own resources to make the plan a reality.

No centralized source of resources exists. The purpose of this blog is to direct others to resources in our communities and to provide one example of a self-directed plan. (*Caution: The self-directed plan described at the beginning of this blog is for an individual with a 5/5 needs rating, the highest possible rating in Maryland, and therefore the highest budget possible. Most will have a lower rating and a lower budget to work with.) It is also to share firsthand knowledge of experiences that may assist others who self-direct services.

Comments are welcome. Please share your knowledge with others.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Promising new drug test for symptoms of ASD

Copy and past this URL to read the full article about this new drug test:
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26284/?p1=A2&a=f#afteradbody

This is one that I would ask my daughter's doctor to look into. Here is just an the beginning of the article:

A Drug Shows Promise in Autism
A chemical that alters chemical signaling seems to ease anxiety and other symptoms.
By Karen Weintraub
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2010


Though the research is still preliminary, scientists appear to be closing in on a molecular explanation for at least some cases of autism. Research in lab animals, cadavers, and now in a small clinical trial in children seems to support the idea that autism is caused by a lack of chemical regulation in synapses, the junction between brain cells.


Alleviating autism: A drug called arbaclofen (its chemical structure is shown above) appears to ease anxiety and some other symptoms in a small study of children with autism.
Credit: Seaside Therapeutics
The latest evidence for this comes from a clinical trial of 25 autistic children ages six to 17. The trial was conducted by Seaside Therapeutics of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In unpublished data released last week, the company says the children seemed to respond well to the drug arbaclofen and suffer minimal side effects. Arbaclofen is related to the drug baclofen, a commonly used muscle relaxer and antispastic agent. The children took the drug for eight weeks, and most saw significant improvements in measures of irritability and communication, two common problems in autism.

The finding is considered preliminary because the study was not placebo-controlled, meaning scientists couldn't compare children taking the drug to those taking a placebo. This is especially important in studies of autism because many of the tests used to assess patients are subjective, including behavioral evaluations from parents and clinicians, says Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele, assistant professor of psychiatry, pediatrics, and pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. About a half-dozen of his patients were involved in the trial.
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