A popular blood pressure medicine may curb symptoms of autism, according to a recent study USA Today reported.

Researchers from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris found that bumetanide, a diuretic approved to treat the fluid retention of high blood pressure, showed promising results in eliminating autism symptoms during animal trials, Fox News reported.

Researchers are now looking to see if the drug can achieve similar effects in children.

"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.

Although autism cannot be diagnosed prenatally, certain conditions that often lead to autism, such as fragile X syndrome, can be diagnosed in that early stage.

In experiments in mice and rats, bumetanide reversed the effects of "a faulty mechanism during birth that might lead the offspring to develop autism," and curbed the symptoms of autism.

"Normally, nerve signaling in a fetus is excited during early development, and then, leading up to and during birth, the hormone oxytocin causes a switch in that excitement," Fox News reported.

Researcher believes the failure of the switch to flip is the underlying cause of autism. This detail was present in rodents with two very different triggers of autism, USA Today reported.

"But in certain cases, there appears to be a buildup of chloride, which prevents that switch from happening. This starts a pathway that could lead to autism, the researchers said."

The team has tried the drug on 30 children with autism and plan on testing it on more "hoping to improve core characteristics of autism for the first time," USA Today reported. It is not clear whether the positive early results in mice and rats will carry over to people.

Gary Goldstein, president and CEO of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Baltimore-based clinic and research center, told USA Today there are so many unknowns regarding the drug, from what the drug will do to the developing brain to how much of the drug to give and when.

"So many things cure cancer in mice and rats, and so many things cure all kinds of things and then when we give them to humans they have adverse effects and don't fix the problems we thought they could fix," Goldstein said. "I wouldn't give it to my child, I can tell you that."