Camel Milk and Autism: What the Trials Actually Found

Camel milk comes up often in autism parent groups, usually with a story attached. Someone's child slept better, or spoke more, or seemed calmer within days. Those stories are sincere, and they are worth taking seriously enough to check properly.

So here is the current position, stated plainly: camel milk has been tested in randomized trials, and when those trials are pooled, it does not produce a measurable improvement in autism symptoms. There is also a safety issue with the raw version that most articles on this topic leave out entirely.

What the research has actually done

Five randomized controlled trials have studied camel milk in autistic children, all conducted in Saudi Arabia. The best known are a 2014 double-blind trial that measured an inflammation-related blood marker and a 2015 trial that measured behavior scores. In 2024, researchers pooled every one of them in a meta-analysis published in the Open Veterinary Journal (Kandeel et al.), covering 299 children in total.

The primary outcome was the Childhood Autism Rating Scale, a standard measure of symptom severity. The pooled result:

• Mean difference of -0.75 points, 95% CI -1.97 to 0.47, p = 0.23. The confidence interval crosses zero, which means no significant difference between camel milk and control.
• Raw milk analyzed separately: no significant difference (p = 0.18).
• Boiled milk analyzed separately: no significant difference (p = 0.49).

The authors were candid about quality: four of the five trials carried "some concern" for risk of bias, mostly because the randomization procedure was not clearly described. Only one was rated low risk.

Their own conclusion is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing, because it is more measured than how this research usually gets reported: camel milk "shows promise in improving social behaviors and certain biochemical markers", but "the current meta-analysis did not document a significant statistical difference in CARS scores for the children studied."

That is the honest summary. Some individual studies reported changes in biochemical markers and specific behaviors. When all the randomized evidence is added together and weighed, the effect on autism symptoms does not hold. Independent reviewers reach the same place: a systematic review of nutritional and dietary interventions for autism in Pediatrics rated the overall strength of this body of evidence, camel milk studies included, as low.

One further note on the literature: an earlier meta-analysis on this topic, Kandeel and El-Deeb, 2022, in Bioinorganic Chemistry and Applications, was retracted in 2023. If you find a confident summary of camel milk research online, it is worth checking which paper it rests on.

The part most articles leave out

A great deal of camel milk advocacy specifically recommends the raw, unpasteurized product, on the theory that pasteurization destroys the active proteins. This is where a diet trial stops being harmless.

The CDC advises against drinking raw camel milk, in the context of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, which has been detected in raw camel milk. The better-documented risk is brucellosis: commercially sold camel milk contaminated with Brucella melitensis caused a traced outbreak documented in Emerging Infectious Diseases, and daily raw camel milk consumption is associated with Brucella seropositivity.

Brucellosis in children can cause prolonged fever, joint pain, and complications that require extended antibiotic treatment. It is not a theoretical concern, and it is a poor trade for an intervention that the pooled trial data does not support.

If a family decides to try camel milk anyway, pasteurized is the only version we would consider reasonable to discuss.

Why the stories persist

The most influential single story in this space is a published case report from 2013 describing one child's improvement on raw camel milk over six years. A case report is one family's experience written up carefully; it cannot separate the milk from everything else in that child's life, which is exactly the job controlled trials exist to do.

Nothing here says parents are imagining what they saw. Three ordinary explanations cover most of it:

Children develop. Autism is developmental. Skills emerge on their own timeline, and a change that arrives during a diet trial did not necessarily arrive because of it.

Diet trials rarely happen alone. Families who start camel milk are usually also adjusting therapy hours, routines, sleep, or other supplements in the same period.

Expectation shapes observation. This is not a criticism. It is why blinded trials exist at all. When a parent knows a child has started something hopeful, genuinely neutral observation becomes very hard, for anyone.

What we would suggest instead

If the underlying worry is nutrition or gut symptoms, those are real medical questions and deserve a real medical answer. A pediatrician or pediatric GI specialist can evaluate reflux, constipation, food allergy, or restricted eating as health problems in their own right, which is a more productive route than treating them as autism symptoms to be dieted away, a pattern we look at more closely in our article on the gluten-free, casein-free diet.

If the underlying hope is progress on communication, behavior, or daily living skills, the interventions with genuine evidence behind them are less novel and considerably more reliable: behavioral therapy with clear goals and progress data, speech and occupational therapy matched to need, and parent coaching.

FAQ

Is camel milk dangerous?

Pasteurized camel milk is a food. The risk sits with the raw product, which has documented links to brucellosis and can carry MERS-CoV.

Some studies found benefits though?

Individual trials reported changes in some measures. When all five randomized trials are pooled, the difference in autism symptom scores is not statistically significant. Pooled evidence is more reliable than any single small study.

My child seemed better on camel milk. Was I wrong?

Not wrong about what you saw. The question is what caused it, and that is exactly what a single family's experience cannot answer, which is why controlled trials exist.

What should we try instead?

Start with your pediatrician for any physical symptoms, and with evidence-based therapy for skills and behavior. If you're in New Jersey, Georgia, or North Carolina, our team is happy to talk through what that looks like.

References

1. Kandeel M, Morsy MA, Al Khodair KM, et al. Meta-analysis of the efficacy of camel milk consumption for improving autism symptoms in children in randomized clinical trials. Open Veterinary Journal. 2024;14(9):2441-2452. doi:10.5455/OVJ.2024.v14.i9.33
2. Bashir S, Al-Ayadhi LY. Effect of camel milk on thymus and activation-regulated chemokine in autistic children: double-blind study. Pediatric Research. 2014;75(4):559-563. doi:10.1038/pr.2013.248
3. Al-Ayadhi LY, Halepoto DM, Al-Dress AM, et al. Behavioral benefits of camel milk in subjects with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan. 2015;25(11):819-823.
4. Sathe N, Andrews JC, McPheeters ML, et al. Nutritional and dietary interventions for autism spectrum disorder: a systematic review. Pediatrics. 2017;139(6):e20170346. doi:10.1542/peds.2017-0346
5. Adams CM. Patient report: autism spectrum disorder treated with camel milk. Global Advances in Health and Medicine. 2013;2(6):78-80. doi:10.7453/gahmj.2013.094
6. Kandeel M, El-Deeb W. The application of natural camel milk products to treat autism-spectrum disorders: risk assessment and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials. Bioinorganic Chemistry and Applications. 2022;2022:6422208. doi:10.1155/2022/6422208. Retracted: see retraction notice, 2023;2023:9807391. doi:10.1155/2023/9807391
7. Bardenstein S, Gibbs RE, Yagel Y, et al. Brucellosis outbreak traced to commercially sold camel milk through whole-genome sequencing, Israel. Emerging Infectious Diseases. 2021;27(6):1728-1731. doi:10.3201/eid2706.204902
8. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Accessed August 10, 2026.