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In contrast to healthy controls, blood L-forms from autistic children and their mothers converted under appropriate conditions of cultivation into detectable opportunistic bacteria and fungi, \u0430 process demonstrated by light and transmission electron microscopy. It can be distinguished into two types of states \u2013 \u201ceubiotic\u201d blood microbiota in healthy individuals, and \u201cdysbiotic\u201d in autistic children and their mothers. Remarkably, the unifying finding for autistic children and their mothers was the presence in blood of wall-free variants from life-cycle of filamentous fungi. Increased specific IgG, IgM and IgA, together with typical mold growth were a decisive argument for proven presence of <jats:italic>Aspergillus fumigatus<\/jats:italic> in almost all of the autistic children. As it was demonstrated in our previous study, filterable L-forms can be transmitted by vertical pathway from mother to child before birth. Thus, it can be suggested that autistic children may be born already colonized with fungi, while a \u201csilent aspergillosis\u201d could contribute or even be a leading cause for neurodevelopmental disorders in the early childhood.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1038\/s41598-019-49768-9","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,9,16]],"date-time":"2019-09-16T10:05:08Z","timestamp":1568628308000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":16,"title":["Dysbiotic microbiota in autistic children and their mothers: persistence of fungal and bacterial wall-deficient L-form variants in blood"],"prefix":"10.1038","volume":"9","author":[{"given":"N.","family":"Markova","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,9,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"49768_CR1","first-page":"257","volume":"17","author":"AD Proal","year":"2014","unstructured":"Proal, A. 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