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by JACQUI THORNTON Health Correspondent
AN American psychiatrist who has raised the hopes of dyslexic children by claiming to have found a "cure" for their condition has been denounced as irresponsible by a leading charity.
Dr Harold Levinson believes that dyslexia is caused by inner-ear imbalance and can be corrected with herbal medication and anti-motion sickness drugs of the type used by the US space agency Nasa.
The parents of some of his patients talk of a miracle in their children's development. But plans by the neurologist to treat up to l,OOO British sufferers at a private clinic in Warwickshire have been criticised by the British Dyslexic Association.
The BDA claims there is no successful treatment for the condition and has urged the families of young sufferersto think twice before paying for the drugs.
An individual assessment at Dr Levinson's clinic will cost £695 and the medication about £160 a year.
Juliette England, a spokesman, said: "There is no suggestion that there is a miracle cure and it really is irresponsible to peddle anything as such.
"There is no treatment for dyslexia, but only identification, proper assessment and a multi-sensory approach where you hear the word, say the word and write the word over and over again."
However, parents who have taken part in informal clinical trials in Leamington, Warwickshire, where the new clinic will be based, support the new treatments.
Susan Hart, whose 13-year-old son Nicholas has dyslexia, said the treatment was "invaluable". He is attending Bredon private school in Worcestershire, where 40 per cent of the 250 pupils have learning difficulties. Three-quarters of those are dyslexic.
Mrs Hart, a businesswoman, said Nicholas, whose problems were first identified when he was six, has flourished since starting the treatment.
"I don't want him to be a frustrated child, I want a happy child," she said. "He used to spell everything ending in a T. He had private tuition and saw educational pyschologists. His self-esteem was low.
"The BDA gave us no help. But in the last year Nick has really improved. It is difficult to say exactly how much word is down to the treatment: the medication has opened a window of opportunity and the school has jumped through that open window."
Last year Nicholas had a reading age two years behind his age and in some of the tests he performed to the standard of a seven-year-old. He was assessed by Dr Levinson in May and started the medication in July.
He said: "First my hand-writing improved, then my spelling and then reading. The words stopped jumping off the page. Now I don't mind reading out loud."
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In the latest test his reading matched the level of a 16-year-old's and he found only and one test difficult.
He has ridden a bicycle for the first time, reads books for pleasure and his self confidence has increased.
The school is open-minded about the US treatment. It advocates small classes and learning without pressure.
Susan West, the head of the learning support centre, said Nicholas had made "encouraging progress. He's altogether more confident".
She said she did not know enough of Dr Levinson's work to know how it had helped her pupil, but added: "Anything that supports them and gives them reassurance has to be a good a thing."
Dr Levinson, who has another clinic in Hong Kong, said he was disappointed by the BDA's reaction and said his theories were supported by published work in the leading medical journal The Lancet.
"I have never said it's a miracle cure. I said it helps significantly," he said. "The BDA has never talked to the parents or to me. The parents are sophisticated people."
His treatment is based on a diagnosis of dyslexia linking it to a dysfunction of the inner ear. He believes this causes the scrambling of signals sent to the brain, which impairs reading.
The condition also reduces the attention span of sufferers and is responsible for attention deficit disorders (ADD) and hyperactivity in children, as well as phobias.
"The accepted explanation for 100 years was that dyslexia was caused by a fault in the processing part of the brain, which failed to recognise signals sent to it," he said.
"But nobody could find anything wrong in that part of the brain in people who had dyslexia. The people with dyslexia I originally studied all had problems with balance and co-ordination, which I found was related to their inner ear."
His patients are given a mixture of anti-motion sickness drugs and anti-histamines, with nutrients such as root ginger.
In his trial of 50 UK patients, Dr Levinson, who runs the Dyslexia and ADD Treatment Centre in New York, estimated four out of five had shown irnprovement since it started eight months ago. A third of those had improved significantly, a third moderately and a third mildly. He said that 80 per cent would take the medication for two to four years, when they would have improved the maximum possible.
Dr Levinson's UK helpline is 0870 750 0718. The British Dyslexic Association's helpline is O118 966 8271.
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Read Dr Levinson's response to this article published in the Sunday Telegraph: Treating dyslexia is all in the ear.
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