Where are you from? neurontin 600 mg 50 entikli film tablet ne iin kullanlr In 2008, Van de Water found that roughly a quarter of 61 women with autistic children carried in their blood an unusual group of antibodiesâ?”large, Y-shaped proteins with sticky ends that normally bind to and destroy foreign or potentially harmful microbes. Some of these, called autoantibodies, occasionally go rogue and attack the body's healthy cells, causing autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. The higher the level of autoantibodies in the mother's blood, the more severe the child's autistic symptoms, Van de Water observed. She hypothesized that these autoantibodies were attacking proteins necessary for fetal brain development.