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Efficacy Of A Gfcf Diet On Children With Asd

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Johnson, Handen, Zimmer, Sacco, and Turner (2010) executed a randomized and controlled study to examine the efficacy of a GFCF diet on children with ASD. They hypothesized that a GFCF diet would improve ASD symptoms and behaviors in children. The 22 children participating in this study were all preschool aged (3 – 5 years) with ASD diagnoses. The children were randomly assigned to a GFCF diet or a “healthy diet.” There were 8 children in the treatment group and 14 in the control. To further enhance the experiment, children in both groups were given changes to their diets in an attempt to control for structure. However, the parents were aware which group their child was in. The study design included an Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule to evaluate each child for a baseline ASD diagnosis. From there, dependent measures were acquired before the start of treatment and at the end of 3 months of treatment. The 3 dependent measures were the Mullen Scales of Early Learning AGS Edition, Child Behavior Checklist, and Direct Behavior Observation Measure. Parents were also counseled by nutritionist on how to maintain a balanced diet for their children on the GFCF diet to supplement for the lack of calcium and vitamin-D.
At the end of 3 months the results for Johnson et al. (2010) were not statistically significant for the majority of measures for the children on the GFCF diet. The threshold for statistical significance was a P-value of ≤ 0.05. The only gains for the diet group were

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