Glue ear, hearing loss and IQ:an association moderated by the child's home environment

BACKGROUND: Glue ear or otitis media with effusion (OME) is common in children and may be associated with hearing loss (HL). For most children it has no long lasting effects on cognitive development but it is unclear whether there are subgroups at higher risk of sequelae. OBJECTIVES: To examine the association between a score comprising the number of times a child had OME and HL (OME/HL score) in the first four/five years of life and IQ at age 4 and 8. To examine whether any association between OME/HL and IQ is moderated by socioeconomic, child or family factors. METHODS: Prospective, longitudinal cohort study: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). 1155 children tested using tympanometry on up to nine occasions and hearing for speech (word recognition) on up to three occasions between age 8 months and 5 years. An OME/HL score was created and associations with IQ at ages 4 and 8 were examined. Potential moderators included a measure of the child's cognitive stimulation at home (HOME score). RESULTS: For the whole sample at age 4 the group with the highest 10% OME/HL scores had performance IQ 5 points lower [95% CI -9, -1] and verbal IQ 6 points lower [95% CI -10, -3] than the unaffected group. By age 8 the evidence for group differences was weak. There were significant interactions between OME/HL and the HOME score: those with high OME/HL scores and low 18 month HOME scores had lower IQ at age 4 and 8 than those with high OME/HL scores and high HOME scores. Adjusted mean differences ranged from 5 to 8 IQ points at age 4 and 8. CONCLUSIONS: The cognitive development of children from homes with lower levels of cognitive stimulation is susceptible to the effects of glue ear and hearing loss

Radioimmunoassay for Human Type Ii Collagen

Human articular cartilage type II collagen (h coll.II) was purified and used to develop a radioimmunoassay. The sequential saturation procedure allowed a sensitivity of 3 ng/tube. The intra and between assay coefficients of variation were less than 10 and 20% respectively in the linear part of the curve. The assay was highly specific for native human articular type II collagen. There was no cross-reactivity with other constituents of cartilage: human proteoglycans, fibronectin, laminin and hyaluronic acid did not interfere with the assay. No cross-reactivity existed with bovine collagen types I, III, IV. However, native collagens from human placenta (I, III, IV, V, VI), rat and calf skin type I collagens and bovine type II collagen produced a weak cross-reaction only at high doses. Concerning the latter, inhibition curves were not parallel. Parallelism of inhibition curves were observed for dilution of type II collagen, produced by human chondrocytes in three-dimensional culture. All of these characteristics indicate that radioimmunoassy of type II collagen is a very sensitive and specific method available for the study and quantification of type II collagen in in vitro experimental conditions

The PDGF-C regulatory region SNP rs28999109 decreases promoter transcriptional activity and is associated with CL/P

Human linkage and association studies suggest a gene(s) for nonsyndromic cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL/P) on chromosome 4q31–q32 at or near the platelet-derived growth factor-C (PDGF-C) locus. The mouse Pdgfc−/− knockout shows that PDGF-C is essential for palatogenesis. To evaluate the role of PDGF-C in human clefting, we performed sequence analysis and SNP genotyping using 1048 multiplex CL/P families and 1000 case–control samples from multiple geographic origins. No coding region mutations were identified, but a novel −986 C>T SNP (rs28999109) was significantly associated with CL/P (P=0.01) in cases from Chinese families yielding evidence of linkage to 4q31–q32. Significant or near-significant association was also seen for this and several other PDGF-C SNPs in families from the United States, Spain, India, Turkey, China, and Colombia, whereas no association was seen in families from the Philippines, and Guatemala, and case–controls from Brazil. The −986T allele abolished six overlapping potential transcription regulatory motifs. Transfection assays of PDGF-C promoter reporter constructs show that the −986T allele is associated with a significant decrease (up to 80%) of PDGF-C gene promoter activity. This functional polymorphism acting on a susceptible genetic background may represent a component of human CL/P etiology

The biology of Malassezia organisms and their ability to induce immune responses and skin disease

Tai-An Chen and Peter B. Hil