Towards a more functional and dynamic assessment of children with special needs in function of more inclusive education

Towards a more functional and dynamic assessment of children with special needs in function of more inclusive education - We present the Guidelines for Inclusive Assessment of children that experiment Special Educational Needs, developed by the DAFFODIL project team

White Matter Hyperintensities in Mild Lewy Body Dementia

Background: The objective of this study was to explore the load of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) in patients with Lewy body dementia (LBD) and compare to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and normal controls (NC). Methods: Diagnosis of LBD and AD was made according to consensus criteria and cognitive tests were administered. MRI scans for 77 (61 AD and 16 LBD) patients and 37 healthy elderly control subjects were available for analysis. We segmented WMH from FLAIR images using an automatic thresholding technique and calculated the volume of WMH in several regions of the brain, using non-parametric tests to compare groups. Multivariate regression was applied. Results: There were no significant differences in WMH between AD and LBD. We found a significant correlation between total and frontal WMH and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and verbal fluency scores in the AD group, but not in the LBD group. Conclusion: The WMH load in LBD was similar to that of AD. A correlation between WMH load and cognition was found in the AD group, but not in the LBD group, suggesting that vascular disease contributes to cognitive impairment in AD but not LBD

Seroprevalence of Antibodies to Microorganisms Known To Cause Arterial and Myocardial Damage in Patients with or without Coronary Stenosis

Infections are assumed to play a role in coronary artery disease (CAD) and cardiomyopathies. It is unknown whether the seroprevalence of antibodies to these microorganisms is higher in patients with than without CAD. The seroprevalence of antibodies to Bartonella henselae, Borrelia burgdorferi, Chlamydia pneumoniae, Coxiella burnetii, Helicobacter pylori, human granulocytic Ehrlichia, Leptospira, Rickettsia conorii, and Treponema pallidum was assessed prospectively in patients with exertional dyspnea or anginal chest pain who underwent coronary angiography because of suspected CAD. Patients with normal angiograms (NA) were those in whom no more than 50% stenosis of any coronary artery was found. Patients with CAD were patients who underwent percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty. There were 50 patients with CAD (9 female) and 62 with NA (25 female), with a mean age of 62 years. All patients had antibodies to at least one microorganism: to B. henselae, 8% of CAD patients and 5% of NA patients; to B. burgdorferi IgG, 14% CAD and 6% NA; to B. burgdorferi IgM, 6% CAD and 3% NA; to C. pneumoniae lipopolysaccharide (LPS) IgA, 76% CAD and 77% NA; to C. pneumoniae LPS IgG, 80% CAD and 90% NA; to C. burnetii, 0% CAD and 5% NA; to H. pylori, 92% CAD and 68% NA; to human granulocytic Ehrlichia, 8% CAD and 3% NA; to Leptospira IgG, 4% CAD and 2% NA; to R. conorii, 10% in both groups; and to T. pallidum, 2% CAD and 0% NA. The seroprevalence of antibodies to micro-organisms known to induce arterial and myocardial damage does not differ between patients with CAD and NA