Serum antibody response to Chlamydia trachomatis TroA and HtrA in women with tubal factor infertility

Persistent genital chlamydial infection may lead to tubal factor infertility (TFI). Chlamydia trachomatis TroA and HtrA are proteins expressed during persistent chlamydial infection in vitro. We studied serum IgG antibody response against these proteins by EIA in women with TFI and in subfertile women without tubal pathology. Altogether, 22 of 258 subfertile women (8.5%) had TFI which was unilateral in 17 cases and bilateral in 5 cases. Overall, 55 (21.3%) of the 258 women had TroA and 39 (15.1%) had HtrA antibodies. Seropositivity to TroA and HtrA was more common among women with TFI than women with other causes for subfertility (45.5 vs. 19.1%, p = 0.004 for TroA; 36.4 vs. 13.1%, p = 0.004 for HtrA). Mean absorbance values and the prevalence of TroA and HtrA antibodies increased with increasing severity of TFI. On the basis of our results, TroA and HtrA serology has the potential to be further developed to a specific biomarker for C. trachomatis-related TFI.Peer reviewe

How do early family systems predict emotion recognition in middle childhood?

Facial emotion recognition (FER) is a fundamental element in human interaction. It begins to develop soon after birth and is important in achieving developmental tasks of middle childhood, such as developing mutual friendships and acquiring social rules of peer groups. Despite its importance, FER research during middle childhood continues to be rather limited. Moreover, research is ambiguous on how the quality of one's early social-emotional environment shapes FER development, and longitudinal studies spanning from infancy to later development are scarce. In this study, we examine how the cohesive, authoritarian, disengaged and enmeshed family system types, assessed during pregnancy and infancy, predict children's FER accuracy and interpretative biases towards happiness, fear, anger and sadness at the age of 10 years (N = 79). The results demonstrated that children from disengaged families (i.e., highly distressed relationships) show superior FER accuracy to those from cohesive families (i.e., harmonious and stable relationships). Regarding interpretative biases, children from cohesive families showed a greater fear bias compared to children from disengaged families. Our findings suggest that even in a relatively low-risk population, variation in the quality of children's early family relationships may shape children's subsequent FER development, perhaps as an evolution-based adaptation to their social-emotional environment.Peer reviewe

Puberty disorders among ART-conceived singletons : a Nordic register study from the CoNARTaS group

STUDY QUESTION Do ART-conceived children have an increased risk for puberty disorders? SUMMARY ANSWER Both ART-conceived boys and girls had a higher risk of puberty disorders; early puberty was more common among girls and late puberty among boys. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY Some physiological differences in growth and metabolism have been reported for ART-conceived children compared to non-ART-conceived children. Knowledge on pubertal development and disorders in ART-conceived children is limited. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION A register-based cohort study was carried out including data from 1985 to 2015. The Committee of Nordic Assisted Reproductive Technology and Safety (CoNARTaS) study population consists of all live and stillborn children, as well as their mothers, registered in the Medical Birth Registers during the study period in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS A total of 122 321 ART-conceived singletons and 6 576 410 non-ART singletons born in Denmark (1994-2014), Finland (1990-2014), Norway (2002-2015) and Sweden (1985-2015) were included. Puberty disorders were defined using International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD)-9/ICD-10 codes and classified in the following groups: late puberty (6268/E30.0), early puberty (2591 and 2958/E30.1 and E30.8) and unspecified disorders (V212 and V579/E30.9 and Z00.3 as well as Z51.80 for Finland). The results in Cox regression were adjusted for maternal age, parity, smoking, gestational diabetes, chronic hypertension, hypertensive disorders during pregnancy and country, and further for either gestational age, birthweight, small for gestational age or large for gestational age. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE There were 37 869 children with diagnoses related to puberty disorders, and 603 of them were born after ART. ART-conceived children had higher risks for early (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 1.45, 95% CI: 1.29-1.64) and late puberty (aHR 1.47, 95% CI: 1.21-1.77). Girls had more diagnoses related to early puberty (aHR 1.46, 95% CI: 1.29-1.66) and boys with late puberty (aHR 1.55, 95% CI: 1.24-1.95). LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION Using reported puberty disorders with ICD codes in health care registers might vary, which may affect the numbers of cases found in the registers. Register data may give an underestimation both among ART and non-ART-conceived children, especially among non-ART children, who may not be as carefully followed as ART-conceived children. Adjustment for causes and duration of infertility, mothers' own puberty characteristics and BMI, as well as children's BMI, was not possible because data were not available or data were missing for the early years. It was also not possible to compare ART to non-ART siblings or to study the pubertal disorders by cause of subfertility owing to a small number of discordant sibling pairs and a large proportion of missing data on cause of subfertility. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS This large, register-based study suggests that ART-conceived children have a higher risk for puberty disorders. However, the mechanisms of infertility and pubertal onset are complex, and ART is a rapidly advancing field with various treatment options. Studying the pubertal disorders of ART-conceived offspring is a continuing challenge. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S) This work was supported by the Nordic Trial Alliance: a pilot project jointly funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers and NordForsk (71450), the Central Norway Regional Health Authorities (46045000), the Nordic Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (NF13041, NF15058, NF16026 and NF17043), the Interreg oresund-Kattegat-Skagerrak European Regional Development Fund (ReproUnion project), the Research Council of Norway's Centre of Excellence funding scheme (262700), the Swedish state under the agreement between the Swedish government and the county councils, the ALF-agreement (ALFGBG-70940) and FLUX Consortium 'Family Formation in Flux-Causes, Consequences and Possible Futures', funded by the Strategic Research Council, Academy of Finland (DEMOGRAPHY 345130). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.Peer reviewe

Early family system types predict children's emotional attention biases at school age

The family environment shapes children's social information processing and emotion regulation. Yet, the long-term effects of early family systems have rarely been studied. This study investigated how family system types predict children's attentional biases toward facial expressions at the age of 10 years. The participants were 79 children from Cohesive, Disengaged, Enmeshed, and Authoritarian family types based on marital and parental relationship trajectories from pregnancy to the age of 12 months. A dot-probe task was used to assess children's emotional attention biases toward threatening (angry) and affiliative (happy) faces at the early (500 ms) and late (1250 ms) stages of processing. Situational priming was applied to activate children's sense of danger or safety. Results showed that children from Cohesive families had an early-stage attentional bias toward threat, whereas children from Enmeshed families had a late-stage bias toward threat. Children from Disengaged families had an early-stage attentional bias toward threat, but showed in addition a late-stage bias away from emotional faces (i.e., both angry and happy). Children from Authoritarian families, in turn, showed a late-stage attentional bias toward emotional faces. Situational priming did not moderate the effects of family system types on children's attentional biases. The findings confirm the influence of early family systems on the attentional biases, suggesting differences in the emotion regulation strategies children have developed to adapt to their family environments.Peer reviewe

Sensitivity of the human auditory cortex to acoustic degradation of speech and non-speech sounds

The perception of speech is usually an effortless and reliable process even in highly adverse listening conditions. In addition to external sound sources, the intelligibility of speech can be reduced by degradation of the structure of speech signal itself, for example by digital compression of sound. This kind of distortion may be even more detrimental to speech intelligibility than external distortion, given that the auditory system will not be able to utilize sound source-specific acoustic features, such as spatial location, to separate the distortion from the speech signal. The perceptual consequences of acoustic distortions on speech intelligibility have been extensively studied. However, the cortical mechanisms of speech perception in adverse listening conditions are not well known at present, particularly in situations where the speech signal itself is distorted. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the cortical mechanisms underlying speech perception in conditions where speech is less intelligible due to external distortion or as a result of digital compression. In the studies of this thesis, the intelligibility of speech was varied either by digital compression or addition of stochastic noise. Cortical activity related to the speech stimuli was measured using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The results indicated that degradation of speech sounds by digital compression enhanced the evoked responses originating from the auditory cortex, whereas addition of stochastic noise did not modulate the cortical responses. Furthermore, it was shown that if the distortion was presented continuously in the background, the transient activity of auditory cortex was delayed. On the perceptual level, digital compression reduced the comprehensibility of speech more than additive stochastic noise. In addition, it was also demonstrated that prior knowledge of speech content enhanced the intelligibility of distorted speech substantially, and this perceptual change was associated with an increase in cortical activity within several regions adjacent to auditory cortex. In conclusion, the results of this thesis show that the auditory cortex is very sensitive to the acoustic features of the distortion, while at later processing stages, several cortical areas reflect the intelligibility of speech. These findings suggest that the auditory system rapidly adapts to the variability of the auditory environment, and can efficiently utilize previous knowledge of speech content in deciphering acoustically degraded speech signals.Puheen havaitseminen on useimmiten vaivatonta ja luotettavaa myös erittäin huonoissa kuunteluolosuhteissa. Puheen ymmärrettävyys voi kuitenkin heikentyä ympäristön häiriölähteiden lisäksi myös silloin, kun puhesignaalin rakennetta muutetaan esimerkiksi pakkaamalla digitaalista ääntä. Tällainen häiriö voi heikentää ymmärrettävyyttä jopa ulkoisia häiriöitä voimakkaammin, koska kuulojärjestelmä ei pysty hyödyntämään äänilähteen ominaisuuksia, kuten äänen tulosuuntaa, häiriön erottelemisessa puheesta. Akustisten häiriöiden vaikutuksia puheen havaitsemiseen on tutkttu laajalti, mutta havaitsemiseen liittyvät aivomekanismit tunnetaan edelleen melko puutteelisesti etenkin tilanteissa, joissa itse puhesignaali on laadultaan heikentynyt. Tämän väitöskirjan tavoitteena oli tutkia puheen havaitsemisen aivomekanismeja tilanteissa, joissa puhesignaali on vaikeammin ymmärrettävissä joko ulkoisen äänilähteen tai digitaalisen pakkauksen vuoksi. Väitöskirjan neljässä osatutkimuksessa lyhyiden puheäänien ja jatkuvan puheen ymmärrettävyyttä muokattiin joko digitaalisen pakkauksen kautta tai lisäämällä puhesignaaliin satunnaiskohinaa. Puheärsykkeisiin liittyvää aivotoimintaa tutkittiin magnetoenkefalografia-mittauksilla. Tutkimuksissa havaittiin, että kuuloaivokuorella syntyneet herätevasteet voimistuivat, kun puheääntä pakattiin digitaalisesti. Sen sijaan puheääniin lisätty satunnaiskohina ei vaikuttanut herätevasteisiin. Edelleen, mikäli puheäänien taustalla esitettiin jatkuvaa häiriötä, kuuloaivokuoren aktivoituminen viivästyi häiriön intensiteetin kasvaessa. Kuuntelukokeissa havaittiin, että digitaalinen pakkaus heikentää puheäänien ymmärrettävyyttä voimakkaammin kuin satunnaiskohina. Lisäksi osoitettiin, että aiempi tieto puheen sisällöstä paransi merkittävästi häiriöisen puheen ymmärrettävyyttä, mikä heijastui aivotoimintaan kuuloaivokuoren viereisillä aivoalueilla siten, että ymmärrettävä puhe aiheutti suuremman aktivaation kuin heikosti ymmärrettävä puhe. Väitöskirjan tulokset osoittavat, että kuuloaivokuori on erittäin herkkä puheäänien akustisille häiriöille, ja myöhemmissä prosessoinnin vaiheissa useat kuuloaivokuoren viereiset aivoalueet heijastavat puheen ymmärrettävyyttä. Tulosten mukaan voi olettaa, että kuulojärjestelmä mukautuu nopeasti ääniympäristön vaihteluihin muun muassa hyödyntämällä aiempaa tietoa puheen sisällöstä tulkitessaan häiriöistä puhesignaalia

How do early family systems predict emotion recognition in middle childhood?

Facial emotion recognition (FER) is a fundamental element in human interaction. It begins to develop soon after birth and is important in achieving developmental tasks of middle childhood, such as developing mutual friendships and acquiring social rules of peer groups. Despite its importance, FER research during middle childhood continues to be rather limited. Moreover, research is ambiguous on how the quality of one's early social-emotional environment shapes FER development, and longitudinal studies spanning from infancy to later development are scarce. In this study, we examine how the cohesive, authoritarian, disengaged and enmeshed family system types, assessed during pregnancy and infancy, predict children's FER accuracy and interpretative biases towards happiness, fear, anger and sadness at the age of 10 years (N = 79). The results demonstrated that children from disengaged families (i.e., highly distressed relationships) show superior FER accuracy to those from cohesive families (i.e., harmonious and stable relationships). Regarding interpretative biases, children from cohesive families showed a greater fear bias compared to children from disengaged families. Our findings suggest that even in a relatively low-risk population, variation in the quality of children's early family relationships may shape children's subsequent FER development, perhaps as an evolution-based adaptation to their social-emotional environment

Clinical effectiveness of elective single versus double embryo transfer: meta-analysis of individual patient data from randomised trials

Objective To compare the effectiveness of elective single embryo transfer versus double embryo transfer on the outcomes of live birth, multiple live birth, miscarriage, preterm birth, term singleton birth, and low birth weight after fresh embryo transfer, and on the outcomes of cumulative live birth and multiple live birth after fresh and frozen embryo transfers

The neurochemical basis of human cortical auditory processing: combining proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy and magnetoencephalography

BACKGROUND: A combination of magnetoencephalography and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to correlate the electrophysiology of rapid auditory processing and the neurochemistry of the auditory cortex in 15 healthy adults. To assess rapid auditory processing in the left auditory cortex, the amplitude and decrement of the N1m peak, the major component of the late auditory evoked response, were measured during rapidly successive presentation of acoustic stimuli. We tested the hypothesis that: (i) the amplitude of the N1m response and (ii) its decrement during rapid stimulation are associated with the cortical neurochemistry as determined by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. RESULTS: Our results demonstrated a significant association between the concentrations of N-acetylaspartate, a marker of neuronal integrity, and the amplitudes of individual N1m responses. In addition, the concentrations of choline-containing compounds, representing the functional integrity of membranes, were significantly associated with N1m amplitudes. No significant association was found between the concentrations of the glutamate/glutamine pool and the amplitudes of the first N1m. No significant associations were seen between the decrement of the N1m (the relative amplitude of the second N1m peak) and the concentrations of N-acetylaspartate, choline-containing compounds, or the glutamate/glutamine pool. However, there was a trend for higher glutamate/glutamine concentrations in individuals with higher relative N1m amplitude. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that neuronal and membrane functions are important for rapid auditory processing. This investigation provides a first link between the electrophysiology, as recorded by magnetoencephalography, and the neurochemistry, as assessed by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, of the auditory cortex

Mismatch negativity generation in the human 5HT2A agonist and NMDA antagonist model of psychosis

RATIONALE: Many studies have reported deficits of mismatch negativity (MMN) in schizophrenic patients. Pharmacological challenges with hallucinogens in healthy humans are used as models for psychotic states. Previous studies reported a significant reduction of MMN after ketamine (N-methyl-D-aspartate acid [NMDA] antagonist model) but not after psilocybin (5HT2A agonist model). OBJECTIVES: The aim of the present study was to directly compare the two models of psychosis using an intraindividual crossover design. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifteen healthy subjects participated in a randomized, double-blind, crossover study with a low and a high dose of the 5HT2A agonist dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and the NMDA antagonist S-ketamine. During electroencephalographic recording, the subjects were performing the AX-version of a continuous performance test (AX-CPT). A source analysis of MMN was performed on the basis of a four-source model of MMN generation. RESULTS: Nine subjects completed both experimental days with the two doses of both drugs. Overall, we found blunted MMN and performance deficits in the AX-CPT after both drugs. However, the reduction in MMN activity was overall more pronounced after S-ketamine intake, and only S-ketamine had a significant impact on the frontal source of MMN. CONCLUSIONS: The NDMA antagonist model and the 5HT2A agonist model of psychosis display distinct neurocognitive profiles. These findings are in line with the view of the two classes of hallucinogens modeling different aspects of psychosis