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Letters to the Editor |
Metametrix Clinical Laboratory, Norcross, GA
aAddress correspondence to this author at: Metametrix Clinical Laboratory, 4855 Peachtree Industrial Blvd, Norcross, GA 30092. Fax 770-441-2237; rslord@metametrix.com.
| The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below. |
To the Editor:
In 1995, Shaw et al. (1) reported the gas chromatographicmass spectrometric identification and quantification of various compounds in the urine of two autistic brothers. In that report (1) and a subsequent one (2), the authors concluded that the presence of several compounds, including tartaric acid (excreted as tartarate), may be causally related to the autistic symptoms and that their origin is an overgrowth of intestinal yeast. The practice of analyzing urine for these compounds to detect intestinal yeast continues, although several lines of evidence contradict these conclusions.
Dietary intake is usually the major contributor to urinary tartarate. The US Food and Drug Administration considers it a generally recognized as safe (GRAS) human food ingredient (3).
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