Cognitive skills and literacy performance of Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia

The present study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and to assess how these abilities were associated with Chinese word reading, word dictation, and reading comprehension. The cognitive skills of interest were morphological awareness, visual-orthographic knowledge, rapid naming, and verbal working memory. A total of 90 junior secondary school students, 30 dyslexic, 30 chronological age controls, and 30 reading level controls was tested on a range of cognitive and literacy tasks. Dyslexic students were less competent than the control students in all cognitive and literacy measures. The regression analyses also showed that verbal working memory, rapid naming, morphological awareness, and visual-orthographic knowledge were significantly associated with literacy performance. Findings underscore the importance of these cognitive skills for Chinese literacy acquisition. Overall, this study highlights the persistent difficulties of Chinese dyslexic adolescents who seem to have multiple causes for reading and spelling difficulties

Potential seminal transport of pharmaceuticals to the conceptus

Small molecule pharmaceutical products are assumed to reach concentrations in semen similar to those in blood plasma. Exposure modeling for these small-molecule products assumes a daily dose of 5 mL of semen and 100% absorption from the vagina with distribution to the conceptus through the maternal systemic circulation. Monoclonal antibody drugs are present in semen at concentrations about 2% or less of those in blood, and the modeling used for small molecules will over-estimate the possibility of conceptus exposure to immunoglobulins. It is not known whether peptide products reach semen, but peptide medications are destroyed by vaginal peptidases, and conceptus exposure is predicted to be minimal. Theoretical exposure routes to pharmaceuticals that might result in exposure of the conceptus greater than that of maternal systemic exposures include direct access through the cervical canal, adsorption to sperm for carriage into the oocyte, and direct delivery from the vaginal veins or lymphatics to the uterine artery. There is some evidence for direct access to the uterus for progesterone, terbutaline, and danazol, but the evidence does not involve exposures during pregnancy in most instances. Studies in mice, rats, rabbits, and monkeys do not suggest that exposure to small molecule pharmaceuticals in semen imposes risks to the conceptus beyond those that can be predicted using modeling of systemic maternal exposure. Monoclonal antibody and peptide exposure in semen does not pose a risk to the conceptus