Gastrointestinal disease in children with autism spectrum disorders: Etiology or consequence?

Figure 1 Pillcam images from the small bowel of a gastrointestinal-symptomatic patient with autism spectrum disorder. Lymphangiectasia in patient with autism spectrum disorder-associated enteritis (left panel, black arrow); the patient also exhibited aphthous ulcerations (orange arrows); Jejunal lymphangiectasia (orange arrows) in adjacent mucosa of same patient (right panel).

Figure 2 Endoscopic image of white spot lesions of the proximal small bowel in a gastrointestinal-symptomatic child with autism spectrum disorder.

Figure 3 Histologic staining of a mucosal biopsy specimen from the proximal small bowel of a patient with autism spectrum disorder-associated enteritis. White spot lesions (truncated villi) can be seen in low (left); medium (middle); and high magnification (right) of the H&E-stained images.

Figure 4 Schematic diagram depicting pathological findings in a portion of the gastrointestinal tract of a representative gastrointestinal-symptomatic child with autism spectrum disorder[9,11,12,16,17,19,20,22,23,26,27,28,30,34,46,52,53]. Key landmarks are identified in the legend (#1-7) and key findings are described throughout the diagram.