Autism and neurodevelopmental disorders: the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic implications

The Special Issue (SI) “Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders: The SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic Implications” is an interesting project that adopted a scientific point of view with important implications in clinical and practical fields [...

How future surgery will benefit from SARS-COV-2-related measures: a SPIGC survey conveying the perspective of Italian surgeons

COVID-19 negatively affected surgical activity, but the potential benefits resulting from adopted measures remain unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the change in surgical activity and potential benefit from COVID-19 measures in perspective of Italian surgeons on behalf of SPIGC. A nationwide online survey on surgical practice before, during, and after COVID-19 pandemic was conducted in March-April 2022 (NCT:05323851). Effects of COVID-19 hospital-related measures on surgical patients' management and personal professional development across surgical specialties were explored. Data on demographics, pre-operative/peri-operative/post-operative management, and professional development were collected. Outcomes were matched with the corresponding volume. Four hundred and seventy-three respondents were included in final analysis across 14 surgical specialties. Since SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, application of telematic consultations (4.1% vs. 21.6%; p < 0.0001) and diagnostic evaluations (16.4% vs. 42.2%; p < 0.0001) increased. Elective surgical activities significantly reduced and surgeons opted more frequently for conservative management with a possible indication for elective (26.3% vs. 35.7%; p < 0.0001) or urgent (20.4% vs. 38.5%; p < 0.0001) surgery. All new COVID-related measures are perceived to be maintained in the future. Surgeons' personal education online increased from 12.6% (pre-COVID) to 86.6% (post-COVID; p < 0.0001). Online educational activities are considered a beneficial effect from COVID pandemic (56.4%). COVID-19 had a great impact on surgical specialties, with significant reduction of operation volume. However, some forced changes turned out to be benefits. Isolation measures pushed the use of telemedicine and telemetric devices for outpatient practice and favored communication for educational purposes and surgeon-patient/family communication. From the Italian surgeons' perspective, COVID-related measures will continue to influence future surgical clinical practice

Inquadramento nosografico dei disturbi da comportamento dirompente in età evolutiva: verso il DSM-5

Il progetto di revisione del DSM-5 ha previsto anche alcune modifiche dei criteri diagnostici dei Disturbi da Comportamento Dirompente (DCD), Disturbo Oppositivo-Provocatorio (DOP) e Disturbo della Condotta (DC), e l’integrazione delle novità emerse in ambito di ricerca per gli aspetti epatogenetici, neurobiologici, neuropsicologici e terapeutici. Obiettivo: descrivere le modifiche proposte nel DSM-5 per i DCD, analizzandone i presupposti teorici e valutando, in particolare, le tipizzazioni proposte e le novità in ambito di diagnosi in età prescolare. Metodologia: dopo un excursus sulla evoluzione nosografica dei DCD nelle varie edizioni del DSM, si passerà ad analizzare i presupposti teorici e i dati di ricerca che hanno motivato le novità nei criteri diagnostici e le tipizzazioni cliniche proposte nel DSM-5. Si descriveranno, in particolare, alcune novità per la diagnosi del DOP in età prescolare e l’inserimento nel DC del sottotipo con tratti Callous-Unemotional . Discussione: saranno analizzati alcuni quesiti che la nuova classificazione pone nella pratica clinica sia in ambito di diagnosi differenziale che di applicabilità dei criteri proposti, con particolare riferimento all’età prescolare

Disruptive Behavior Disorders: Symptoms, Evaluation and Treatment

Disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) refer to a group of conditions that typically share difficulties in modulating aggressive conducts, self-control, and impulses, with resulting behaviors that constitute a threat to others’ safety and to social norms [...

Reading Behaviors through Patterns of Finger-Tracking in Italian Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The paper proposes an ecological and portable protocol for the large-scale collection of reading data in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children based on recording the finger movements of a subject reading a text displayed on a tablet touchscreen. By capitalizing on recent evidence that movements of a finger that points to a scene or text during visual exploration or reading may approximate eye fixations, we focus on recognition of written content and function words, pace of reading, and accuracy in reading comprehension. The analysis showed significant differences between typically developing and ASD children, with the latter group exhibiting greater variation in levels of reading ability, slower developmental pace in reading speed, less accurate comprehension, greater dependency on word length and word frequency, less significant prediction-based processing, as well as a monotonous, steady reading pace with reduced attention to weak punctuation. Finger-tracking patterns provides evidence that ASD readers may fail to integrate single word processing into major syntactic structures and lends support to the hypothesis of an impaired use of contextual information to predict upcoming stimuli, suggesting that difficulties in perception may arise as difficulties in prediction

Biological Bases of Empathy and Social Cognition in Patients with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Focus on Treatment with Psychostimulants

In recent years, there has been growing interest in investigating the effect of specific pharmacological treatments for ADHD not only on its core symptoms, but also on social skills in youths. This stands especially true for ADHD patients displaying impulsive aggressiveness and antisocial behaviors, being the comorbidity with Disruptive Behavior Disorders, one of the most frequently observed in clinical settings. This systematic review aimed to synthesize research findings on this topic following PRISMA guidelines and to identify gaps in current knowledge, future directions, and treatment implications. Search strategies included the following terms: ADHD; methylphenidate and other ADHD drugs; empathy, theory of mind and emotion recognition. Full-text articles were retrieved and data from individual studies were collected. Thirteen studies were finally included in our systematic review. Ten studies assessing changes in empathy and/or theory of mind in patients with ADHD treated after pharmacological interventions were identified. Similarly, seven partially overlapping studies assessing changes in emotion recognition were retrieved. Despite a great heterogeneity in the methodological characteristics of the included studies, most of them reported an improvement in emphatic and theory of mind abilities in youths with ADHD treated with psychostimulants and nonstimulant drugs, as well as positive but less consistent results about emotion recognition performances

Systematic review and meta-analysis: altered autonomic functioning in youths with emotional dysregulation

Objective: to systematically investigate if there is a significant association between markers of autonomic functioning and emotional dysregulation (ED) in children and adolescents.Method: based on a pre-registered protocol (PROSPERO: CRD42021239635), we searched Pubmed, Web of Knowledge/Science, Ovid Medline, Embase and APA PsycInfo (21st April 2021) and included empirical studies reporting indices of autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning in youths meeting DSM/ICD criteria for any psychopathological/neurodevelopmental condition and assessed for ED with a validated scale. Eligible outcomes included correlation coefficients between ED and ANS measures or differences in ANS measures between youths with and without ED. Study quality was assessed with the Appraisal tool for Cross-Sectional Studies (AXIS) and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) for cohort studies. Random-effects meta-analyses were used for data synthesis.Results: twelve studies (1016 participants) were included in the descriptive review and nine (567 participants) in the meta-analyses. We did not find evidence of a significant association between ED and altered cardiac or electrodermal functioning. However, exploratory meta-regressions suggested a possible association between reduced resting-state cardiac vagal control and increased ED.Conclusion: our study did not find evidence of an association between ED and autonomic dysfunction. However, we found preliminary evidence that reduced vagal control at rest might be a transdiagnostic marker of ED in young people. Additional future studies comparing autonomic measures in youths with and without ED are needed, and should also assess the effects of interventions for ED on ANS functioning.</p