Iron therapy substantially restores qEEG maturational lag among iron-deficient anemic infants

Objective: To use quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) to assess the impact of iron-deficiency anemia on central nervous system maturation in the first year of life. Method: Twenty-five infants (3–12 months old) presenting ferropenic anemia (IDA) and 25 healthy controls (CTL1), matched by age/gender with the former, were studied in two stages. Electroencephalogram during spontaneous sleep was recorded from all participants; the fast Fourier transform was calculated to obtain absolute power (AP) and relative power (RP) qEEG measures. In the first stage, a qEEG comparison between CTL1 and IDA was performed. Second stage consisted in comparing qEEG of the IDA infants before and after supplementation with iron (IDA-IS group), and comparing qEEG of the IDA-IS group with another control age-matched group (CTL2). Non-parametric multivariate permutation tests (NPT) were applied to assess differences between CTL1 and IDA groups, as well as IDA vs. IDA-IS, and IDA-IS vs. CTL2. Results: More power in slow frequency bands and less power in fast frequency bands in 64% of IDA babies were observed. NPT evinced higher alpha AP and RP (P < 0.001), less theta AP, and less delta and theta RP in CTL1 than in IDA. After iron-restoration therapy, alpha AP and RP increased while theta AP and theta and delta RP decreased, reaching almost normal values. Discussion: This work reveals CNS developmental delay through the study of qEEG (less rapid and more slow frequencies) which recovered significantly with iron supplementation. It is concluded that IDA constitutes a high risk factor for a lag of CNS maturation.CONACYT-Project No. CO1/40257-A1

Assessment of cognitive performance among Mexican children and adolescents afflicted by simple to complex congenital heart diseases. Preliminary study

Among patients afflicted by congenital heart diseases (CHD) diverse, and complex neurological alterations are commonly observed. These have neither been completely identified nor understood. With the aim of identifying specific neurocognitive alterations among children and adolescents afflicted by CHD we investigated the possible presence of cognitive disorders related to the presence of cardiovascular disease with the aid of a sample of 20 patients (12 teenagers and 8 school-age children). Taken altogether, 9 of them were afflicted by simple and 11 by complex pathologies (respectively, CHDs/c). The Neuropsychological Test for Memory and Attention (Neuropsi), standardized for Mexico by Ostrosky et al. (2004), was individually applied to all participants. The information of cognitive performance was obtained in relation to the categories attention and memory, and the same areas allowed us to assess global performance. CHDc subjects performed significantly poorer compared to CHDs in i) attention and executive function, ii) memory and iii) attention and memory. Likewise, among CHDc subjects a significantly higher proportion of cases were diagnosed as abnormal in the same variables. Also a significant and negative correlation was determined between CHD severity and neuropsychological scoring. Children and adolescents afflicted by CHD are at high risk of developing cognitive function alterations including aspects of memory, attention and executive functions, alterations which are likely to be worst among those cases carrying CHDc conditions