Defining language impairments in a subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is diagnosed on the basis of core impairments in pragmatic language skills, which are found across all ages and subtypes. In contrast, there is significant heterogeneity in language phenotypes, ranging from nonverbal to superior linguistic abilities, as defined on standardized tests of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. The majority of children are verbal but impaired in language, relative to age-matched peers. One hypothesis is that this subgroup has ASD and co-morbid specific language impairment (SLI). An experiment was conducted comparing children with ASD to children with SLI and typically developing controls on aspects of language processing that have been shown to be impaired in children with SLI: repetition of nonsense words. Patterns of performance among the children with ASD and language impairment were similar to those with SLI, and contrasted with the children with ASD and no language impairment and typical controls, providing further evidence for the hypothesis that a subgroup of children with ASD has co-morbid SLI. The findings are discussed in the context of brain imaging studies that have explored the neural bases of language impairment in ASD and SLI, and overlap in the genes associated with elevated risk for these disorders.M01 RR00533 - NCRR NIH HHS; R01 DC10290 - NIDCD NIH HHS; U19 DC03610 - NIDCD NIH HH

The Role of Zinc in Depressed Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Women: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

AbstractPerinatal depression is a depressive illness that affects 10–15% of women in the UK with an estimated cost of £1.8 billion/year. Zinc deficiency is associated with the development of mood disorders and zinc supplementation has been shown to help reduce the symptoms of depression. Women who are pregnant and breastfeeding are at risk of lower levels of zinc because of the high demand from the developing and feeding baby. However, studies in the perinatal period are limited. With a long-term aim of designing a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to examine if zinc supplementation reduces depressive symptoms in pregnant and lactating women;the objective of this review was to systematically evaluate previous RCTs assessing zinc supplementation and depressive symptoms, in order to establish a zinc dosing regimen with regards to Galenic formulation, unit dose and frequency. The review was conducted by independent reviewers in accordance with PRISMA guidelines and is registered at Prospero (CRD42017059205). The Allied and Complimentary Medicine, CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Cochrane databases were searched since records began, with no restrictions, for intervention trials assessing Galenic formulation, unit dose and frequency of zinc supplementation to reduce the symptoms of depression. From a total of 66 identified records, 7 articles met the inclusion and exclusion criteria; all assessed the effect of zinc supplementation on mood. Risk of bias was independently assessed using the standard ‘Cochrane risk of bias tool’. Overall, 5 of the 7 papers were rated as high-quality trials; of the other two, one was rated poor and the other fair but both had a number of learning points. Preliminary findings indicate at the end of supplementing zinc, depression scores were reduced significantly. In one study, the Beck score decreased in the placebo group, but this reduction was not significant compared to the baseline. In two of the studies there was a significant correlation between serum zinc and self-reported mood questionnaires. Results also suggest that 25 mg zinc supplementation combined with antidepressant drugs can be effective in the treatment of major depression in women. This supports other work where researchers supplemented 25 mg of elemental zinc for 12 weeks or longer and found a reduction of symptoms in both pregnant and non-pregnant women. Thus, an early conclusion is that 25 mg of elemental zinc is an effective dose for improving low mood and is achievable in a trial setting.</jats:p

Probing Structural and Motional Features of the C-Terminal Part of the Human Centrin 2/P17-XPC Microcrystalline Complex by Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy

International audienceAn insight into structural and motional features of the C-terminal part of the Human Centrin 2 in complex with the peptide P17-XPC was obtained by using complementary solid-state NMR methods. We demonstrate that the experimental conditions and procedures of sample crystallization determine not only the quality of solid-state NMR spectra but can also dramatically modify the dynamic state of water molecules and the internal mobility of the protein. Two-dimensional (2D) 13C - 13C and 15N - 15N correlation spectra reveal intra- and inter-residue dipolar connectivities and provide partial, site-specific assignments of 13C and 15N resonance signals. The secondary structure of the C-ter HsCen2 /P17-XPC complex in a microcrystalline state appears similar to that found in solution. Conformational flexibility is probed through relaxation-compensated measurements of dipolar order parameters that exploit the dynamics of cross-polarization in multidimensional experiments. The extracted dipolar coupling constants and relevant order parameters reveal increased backbone flexibility of the loops except for residues involved in coordination with the Ca2+ cation that stabilizes the hydrophobic pocket containing the peptide P17-XPC

Evolutionary optimisation of neural network models for fish collective behaviours in mixed groups of robots and zebrafish

Animal and robot social interactions are interesting both for ethological studies and robotics. On the one hand, the robots can be tools and models to analyse animal collective behaviours, on the other hand, the robots and their artificial intelligence are directly confronted and compared to the natural animal collective intelligence. The first step is to design robots and their behavioural controllers that are capable of socially interact with animals. Designing such behavioural bio-mimetic controllers remains an important challenge as they have to reproduce the animal behaviours and have to be calibrated on experimental data. Most animal collective behavioural models are designed by modellers based on experimental data. This process is long and costly because it is difficult to identify the relevant behavioural features that are then used as a priori knowledge in model building. Here, we want to model the fish individual and collective behaviours in order to develop robot controllers. We explore the use of optimised black-box models based on artificial neural networks (ANN) to model fish behaviours. While the ANN may not be biomimetic but rather bio-inspired, they can be used to link perception to motor responses. These models are designed to be implementable as robot controllers to form mixed-groups of fish and robots, using few a priori knowledge of the fish behaviours. We present a methodology with multilayer perceptron or echo state networks that are optimised through evolutionary algorithms to model accurately the fish individual and collective behaviours in a bounded rectangular arena. We assess the biomimetism of the generated models and compare them to the fish experimental behaviours.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Food access and diet quality are associated with quality of life outcomes among HIV-infected individuals in Uganda.

BACKGROUND: Food insecurity is associated with poor nutritional and clinical outcomes among people living with HIV/AIDS. Few studies investigate the link between food insecurity, dietary diversity and health-related quality of life among people living with HIV/AIDS. OBJECTIVE: We investigated whether household food access and individual dietary diversity are associated with health-related quality of life among people living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda. METHODS: We surveyed 902 people living with HIV/AIDS and their households from two clinics in Northern Uganda. Health-related quality of life outcomes were assessed using the Medical Outcomes Study (MOS)-HIV Survey. We performed multivariate regressions to investigate the relationship between health-related quality of life, household food insecurity and individual dietary diversity. RESULTS: People living with HIV/AIDS from severe food insecurity households have mean mental health status scores that are 1.7 points lower (p<.001) and physical health status scores that are 1.5 points lower (p<.01). Individuals with high dietary diversity have mean mental health status scores that were 3.6 points higher (p<.001) and physical health status scores that were 2.8 points higher (p<.05). CONCLUSIONS: Food access and diet quality are associated with health-related quality of life and may be considered as part of comprehensive interventions designed to mitigate psychosocial consequences of HIV

Cytomegalovirus antibodies in dried blood spots: a minimally invasive method for assessing stress, immune function, and aging

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a prevalent herpesvirus with links to both stress and aging. This paper describes and validates a minimally invasive method for assessing antibodies against CMV in finger stick whole blood spot samples for use as an indirect marker of an aspect of cell-mediated immunity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Analysis of CMV in dried blood spot samples (DBS) was based on modifications of a commercially available protocol for quantifying CMV antibodies in serum or plasma. The method was evaluated through analysis of precision, reliability, linearity, and correlation between matched serum and DBS samples collected from 75 volunteers. Correlation between DBS and plasma values was linear and high (Pearson correlation <it>R </it>= .96), and precision, reliability, and linearity of the DBS assay were within acceptable ranges.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The validity of a DBS assay for CMV antibodies will enable its inclusion in population-based surveys and other studies collecting DBS samples in non-clinical settings, increasing scientific understanding of the interaction of social and biological stress and immune function.</p

Hospital competition, resource allocation and quality of care

BACKGROUND: A variety of approaches have been used to contain escalating hospital costs. One approach is intensifying price competition. The increase in price based competition, which changes the incentives hospitals face, coupled with the fact that consumers can more easily evaluate the quality of hotel services compared with the quality of clinical care, may lead hospitals to allocate more resources into hotel rather than clinical services. METHODS: To test this hypothesis we studied hospitals in California in 1982 and 1989, comparing resource allocations prior to and following selective contracting, a period during which the focus of competition changed from quality to price. We estimated the relationship between clinical outcomes, measured as risk-adjusted-mortality rates, and resources. RESULTS: In 1989, higher competition was associated with lower clinical expenditures levels compared with 1982. The trend was stronger for non-profit hospitals. Lower clinical resource use was associated with worse risk adjusted mortality outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: This study raises concerns that cost reductions may be associated with increased mortality

Tyrosine hydroxylase activity in the endocrine pancreas: changes induced by short-term dietary manipulation

BACKGROUND: Tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) activity and its possible participation in the control of insulin secretion were studied in pancreatic islets of adult Wistar rats fed a standard commercial diet (SD) or carbohydrates alone (CHD) for one week. TH activity, norepinephrine (NE) content, and glucose-induced insulin secretion were assessed. Blood glucose and insulin levels were measured at the time of sacrifice. RESULTS: CHD rats had significantly higher blood glucose and lower insulin levels than SD rats (114.5 ± 6.7 vs 80.7 ± 7.25 mg/dl, p < 0.001; 20.25 ± 2.45 vs 42.5 ± 4.99 μU/ml, p < 0.01, respectively). Whereas TH activity was significantly higher in CHD isolated islets (600 ± 60 vs 330 ± 40 pmol/mg protein/h; p < 0.001), NE content was significantly lower (18 ± 1 vs 31 ± 5 pmol/mg protein), suggesting that TH activity would be inhibited by the end-products of catecholamines (CAs) biosynthetic pathway. A similar TH activity was found in control and solarectomized rats (330 ± 40 vs 300 ± 80 pmol/mg protein/h), suggesting an endogenous rather than a neural origin of TH activity. CHD islets released significantly less insulin in response to glucose than SD islets (7.4 ± 0.9 vs 11.4 ± 1.1 ng/islet/h; p < 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: TH activity is present in islet cells; dietary manipulation simultaneously induces an increase in this activity together with a decrease in glucose-induced insulin secretion in rat islets. TH activity – and the consequent endogenous CAs turnover – would participate in the paracrine control of insulin secretion

Centralization of Esophageal Cancer Surgery: Does It Improve Clinical Outcome?

Background: The volume-outcome relationship for complex surgical procedures has been extensively studied. Most studies are based on administrative data and use in-hospital mortality as the sole outcome measure. It is still unknown if concentration of these procedures leads to improvement of clinical outcome. The aim of our study was to audit the process and effect of centralizing oesophageal resections for cancer by using detailed clinical data. Methods: From January 1990 until December 2004, 555 esophagectomies for cancer were performed in 11 hospitals in the region of the Comprehensive Cancer Center West (CCCW); 342 patients were operated on before and 213 patients after the introduction of a centralization project. In this project patients were referred to the hospitals which showed superior outcomes in a regional audit. In this audit patient, tumor, and operative details as well as clinical outcome were compared between hospitals. The outcome of both cohorts, patients operated on before and after the start of the project, were evaluated. Results: Despite the more severe comorbidity of the patient group, outcome improved after centralizing esophageal resections. Along with a reduction in postoperative morbidity and length of stay, mortality fell from 12% to 4% and survival improved significantly (P = 0.001). The hospitals with the highest procedural volume showed the biggest improvement in outcome. Conclusion: Volume is an important determinant of quality of care in esophageal cancer surgery. Referral of patients with esophageal cancer to surgical units with adequate experience and superior outcomes (outcome-based referral) improves quality of care

The Myocardial Ischemia Reduction with Acute Cholesterol Lowering trial: MIRACuLous or not, it's time to change current practice

The Myocardial Ischemia Reduction with Aggressive Cholesterol Lowering (MIRACL) study was the first trial to assess whether statins might be of clinical benefit in those with recently unstable coronary disease. MIRACL found that high-dose atorvastatin was safe and reduced the incidence of the composite endpoint, death, non-fatal myocardial infarction, resuscitated sudden cardiac death or emergent rehospitalization for recurrent ischemia at 16 weeks when compared with placebo. Despite a number of important study limitations, MIRACL's findings and the prior observation that inpatient initiation of lipid-lowering therapy is associated with higher rates of subsequent utilization, suggest that it is prudent to begin statin therapy when patients present with an acute coronary syndrome