Exclusive enteral nutrition mediates gut microbial and metabolic changes that are associated with remission in children with Crohn’s disease

GD and AWW receive core funding support from the Scottish Government’s Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Services (RESAS) Division. JW was funded by the Wellcome Trust [Grant No. 098051]. JVL is funded by MRC New Investigator Grant (MR/P002536/1) and ERC Starting Grant (715662). JK is funded by NIHR: II-OL-1116-10027, NIH: R01-CA204403-01A1, Horizon H2020: ITN GROWTH. Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, SAGES research grant. Infrastructure support for this research was provided by the NIHR Imperial biomedical Research Centre (BRC). Microbiota analyses were carried out using the Maxwell computer cluster at the University of Aberdeen. We thank the Illumina MiSeq team at the Wellcome Sanger Institute for their assistance. This work was partially described in the Ph.D. thesis of KD (Retrieved 2020, Pediatric inflammatory bowel disease Monitoring, nutrition and surgery, https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/23176012/Thesis_complete_.pdf).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Abnormal synchrony and effective connectivity in patients with schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations

[EN] Auditory hallucinations (AH) are the most frequent positive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Hallucinations have been related to emotional processing disturbances, altered functional connectivity and effective connectivity deficits. Previously, we observed that, compared to healthy controls, the limbic network responses of patients with auditory hallucinations differed when the subjects were listening to emotionally charged words. We aimed to compare the synchrony patterns and effective connectivity of task-related networks between schizophrenia patients with and without AH and healthy controls. Schizophrenia patients with AH (n = 27) and without AH (n = 14) were compared with healthy participants (n = 31). We examined functional connectivity by analyzing correlations and cross-correlations among previously detected independent component analysis time courses. Granger causality was used to infer the information flow direction in the brain regions. The results demonstrate that the patterns of cortico-cortical functional synchrony differentiated the patients with AH from the patients without AH and from the healthy participants. Additionally, Granger-causal relationships between the networks clearly differentiated the groups. In the patients with AH, the principal causal source was an occipital¿cerebellar component, versus a temporal component in the patients without AH and the healthy controls. These data indicate that an anomalous process of neural connectivity exists when patients with AH process emotional auditory stimuli. Additionally, a central role is suggested for the cerebellum in processing emotional stimuli in patients with persistent AH.Funding for this study was provided by Spanish grants from Ministry of Science and Innovation (ISCIII: FIS P.I.02/0018, P.I.05/2332.), Spanish Mental Health Network: CIBERSAM and Combiomed Network.De La Iglesia-Vaya, M.; Escartí Fabra, MJ.; Molina-Mateo, J.; Marti-Bonmati, L.; Gadea, M.; Castellanos, FX.; Aguilar Garcia-Iturrospe, EJ.... (2014). Abnormal synchrony and effective connectivity in patients with schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations. NeuroImage Clinical. 6:171-179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2014.08.027S171179

Oscillatory Cortical Network Involved in Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Schizophrenia

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH), a prominent symptom of schizophrenia, are often highly distressing for patients. Better understanding of the pathogenesis of hallucinations could increase therapeutic options. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) provides direct measures of neuronal activity and has an excellent temporal resolution, offering a unique opportunity to study AVH pathophysiology.Twelve patients (10 paranoid schizophrenia, 2 psychosis not otherwise specified) indicated the presence of AVH by button-press while lying in a MEG scanner. As a control condition, patients performed a self-paced button-press task. AVH-state and non-AVH state were contrasted in a region-of-interest (ROI) approach. In addition, the two seconds before AVH onset were contrasted with the two seconds after AVH onset to elucidate a possible triggering mechanism.AVH correlated with a decrease in beta-band power in the left temporal cortex. A decrease in alpha-band power was observed in the right inferior frontal gyrus. AVH onset was related to a decrease in theta-band power in the right hippocampus.These results suggest that AVH are triggered by a short aberration in the theta band in a memory-related structure, followed by activity in language areas accompanying the experience of AVH itself

Efficacy and safety of prucalopride in adults and children with chronic constipation

Chronic constipation (CC) is a debilitating condition with high prevalence rates both in children and adults. Despite the broad range of medical and pharmaceutical treatments, the bowel function does not restore in a fair amount of patients. Prucalopride is a first-in-class selective, high affinity serotonin 5-hydroxytryptamine type 4 (5-HT4) receptor agonist promoting gastro-intestinal prokinetic activity and has been evaluated for the treatment of CC. A PubMed search (1965 - 2014) using the following terms alone or in combination: prucalopride, 5-HT4, R093877, safety, toxicity, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, transit, cardiac, human ether-a-go-go related gene (hERG), arrhythmia, potassium current, elderly, children. Prucalopride, a highly selective 5-HT4 receptor agonist, stimulates gastrointestinal motility and has been proven to be effective in the treatment of CC in adults by increasing stool frequency, reducing constipation-related symptoms and improving quality of life (QoL). The safety and tolerability have been proven to be excellent. More research would be preferable on the effect of prucalopride on men, children and in other gastrointestinal motility disorder

Checked and approved? Human resources managers’ uses of social media for cybervetting

Human resource (HR) professionals who assess job candidates may engage in cybervetting, the collection and analysis of applicants’ personal information available on social network sites (SNS). This raises important questions about the privacy of job applicants. In this study, interviews were conducted with 24 HR professionals from profit and governmental organizations to examine how information found on SNS is used to screen job applicants. HR managers were found to check for possible mismatches between the online information and the experiences and competences claimed by candidates. Pictures of the job candidates’ spare time activities, drinking behavior, and physical appearance are seen as very informative. Pictures posted by job candidates’ connections are valued as more informative than those posted by the applicants themselves. Governmental organizations’ HR managers differ from profit-sector professionals by the fact that political views may play a role for the former. Finally, some HR professionals do not collect personal information about job candidates through social media, since they aim to respect a clear distinction between private life and work. They do not want to be influenced by information that has no relation with candidates’ qualifications. The study’s implications for theory and practice are also discussed

Checked and approved? Human resources managers' uses of social media for cybervetting

Human resource (HR) professionals who assess job candidates may engage in cybervetting, the collection and analysis of applicants’ personal information available on social network sites (SNS). This raises important questions about the privacy of job applicants. In this study, interviews were conducted with 24 HR professionals from profit and governmental organizations to examine how information found on SNS is used to screen job applicants. HR managers were found to check for possible mismatches between the online information and the experiences and competences claimed by candidates. Pictures of the job candidates’ spare time activities, drinking behavior, and physical appearance are seen as very informative. Pictures posted by job candidates’ connections are valued as more informative than those posted by the applicants themselves. Governmental organizations’ HR managers differ from profit-sector professionals by the fact that political views may play a role for the former. Finally, some HR professionals do not collect personal information about job candidates through social media, since they aim to respect a clear distinction between private life and work. They do not want to be influenced by information that has no relation with candidates’ qualifications. The study’s implications for theory and practice are also discussed

Epidemiology of pediatric functional abdominal pain disorders: a meta-analysis.

We aimed to review the literature regarding epidemiology of functional abdominal pain disorders in children and to assess its geographic, gender and age distribution including associated risk factors of developing functional abdominal pain.The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL and PsychInfo databases were systematically searched up to February 2014. Study selection criteria included: (1) studies of birth cohort, school based or general population samples (2) containing data concerning epidemiology, prevalence or incidence (3) of children aged 4-18 years (4) suffering from functional abdominal pain. Quality of studies was rated by a self-made assessment tool. A random-effect meta-analysis model was used to estimate the prevalence of functional abdominal pain in childhood.A total of 58 articles, including 196,472 children were included. Worldwide pooled prevalence for functional abdominal pain disorders was 13.5% (95% CI 11.8-15.3), of which irritable bowel syndrome was reported most frequently (8.8%, 95% CI 6.2-11.9). The prevalence across studies ranged widely from 1.6% to 41.2%. Higher pooled prevalence rates were reported in South America (16.8%) and Asia (16.5%) compared to Europe (10.5%). And a higher pooled prevalence was reported when using the Rome III criteria (16.4%, 95% CI 13.5-19.4). Functional abdominal pain disorders are shown to occur significantly more in girls (15.9% vs. 11.5%, pooled OR 1.5) and is associated with the presence of anxiety and depressive disorders, stress and traumatic life events.Functional abdominal pain disorders are a common problem worldwide with irritable bowel syndrome as most encountered abdominal pain-related functional gastrointestinal disorder. Female gender, psychological disorders, stress and traumatic life events affect prevalence

Parental Distress and Quality of Life in Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Implications for the Outpatient Clinic

The interrelation between the course of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in children and parent's distress, and the subsequent impact this may have on Health-Related Quality Of Life (HRQOL) of the child is unclear. Therefore, we investigated (I) patient's HRQOL and parental distress, and (II) the association between the course of IBD, parental distress, and HRQOL of pediatric IBD patients. Pediatric IBD patients (8-18 years) and parents were invited. Patients completed the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory, and parents the Distress Thermometer for Parents, simultaneously. Disease course was expressed as current clinical disease activity or months since last IBD flare. Patient's HRQOL and parental distress were compared to healthy controls. In total, 87 patients (71% response rate, 59% male, median age 15.2 years) and parents were included. Patients had an impaired total HRQOL (β = 0.125, p = 0.010), driven by lower physical ( = 0.196, p = 0.001) and school (β = 0.232, p  < 0.001) functioning. Parents of children with IBD exhibited comparable levels of distress to parents of healthy children on the total problem and most subdomain problem scores (practical, social, emotional, physical and cognitive), yet experienced more frequent parenting problems (p = 0.025).More severe disease course (months since last IBD flare) was indirectly associated, through parental distress, with decreased HRQOL of patients. Worse disease course is directly associated with increased distress of parents and indirectly with lower HRQOL of children and adolescents with IBD. Distress of parents may be considered in management of pediatric IBD to improve HRQOL of childre