Autism Treatment – MAO-A Activity, and Its Benefits As an Autism Treatment, Part 1 of 2

This article on the MAO-A activity will be a 2 part series. But, in a previous recording, I believe that I misspoke about the name of the journal so I just wanted to quickly clarify something. The correct name of the journal that published the study on Reserpine was The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease and the doctor was Dr. Lehman and others. Again, this study in 1957 used Reserpine is doses between 3 and 7 mg on people with Autism and found that this helped with socialization, communication, eye contact and reduced self stimulatory behaviors. So if you’d like to look this study up, again the doctor was Dr. Lehman and the study in 1957 was published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

So now I would like to discuss a little bit about how Reserpine works. There is a particular enzyme to be aware of that is called Monoamine Oxidase A or MAO-A for short. Now the enzyme MAO-A is found inside of cells and is vital in aiding the metabolism of three main neurotransmitters, nor epinephrine, serotonin and histamine. And Reserpine functions as an MAO-A agonist. There appear to be many people out there who have been commenting that Respen-A will inhibit MAO-A activity or that it will deplete MAO-A. But that is the role of an MAO-A inhibitor and neither Respen-A nor its active ingredient Reserpine are MAO-A inhibitors. Some medications that often times treat depression are MAO-A inhibitors, but Reserpine is not an MAO-A inhibitor. What Reserpine does is it augments the metabolic capacity, or the enzyme capacity, of MAO-A.

And what happens is that serotonin is converted into something called its active aldehyde form. That active aldehyde form, which is known as 5 hydroxyindole acetaldehyde, can them complex with the post synaptic receptor which then manifests as the physiological effect on the post synaptic neuron. But over time, in doing that you could result in serotonin depletion if you are using high doses of Reserpine. You could also see this with Respen-A use if you are not replenishing serotonin and keeping protein levels adequate.