A drug for eliminating symptoms of certain forms of autism in people is now being successfully tested in animals, researchers report, Fox News reports.

In experiments in mice and rats, the drug reversed the effects of a faulty mechanism during birth that might lead the offspring to develop autism, according to studies published Feb. 6 in the journal Science.

The drug, called bumetanide, is a diuretic already approved to treat people with liver and heart disease. It is being tested for safety in children with autism.

"If you administer a diuretic to the mother 24 hours before delivery, the offspring is, so to speak, cured," study author Yehezkel Ben-Ari, a neurobiologist at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, told reporters.

Mice and rats develop differently from humans, and the first few months of life in humans are comparable, in terms of development, to the last few weeks of pregnancy in mice and rats. So it remains to be seen whether giving the drug to infants early in life will match the effects of administering the drug to a pregnant mouse or rat.

Autism cannot be diagnosed prenatally, but certain conditions that often lead to autism, such as fragile X syndrome, can be diagnosed in that early stage. Some of the animals in the study were models of fragile X.