Performance and symptom validity indicators among children undergoing cognitive surveillance following treatment for craniopharyngioma.

Background: Performance validity tests (PVTs) and symptom validity tests (SVTs) are essential to neuropsychological evaluations, helping ensure findings reflect true abilities or concerns. It is unclear how PVTs and SVTs perform in children who received radiotherapy for brain tumors. Accordingly, we investigated the rate of noncredible performance on validity indicators as well as associations with fatigue and lower intellectual functioning.

Exploring the interagency collaboration between a pediatric oncology health care setting and community schools.

Globally, approximately 400,000 youth are diagnosed with pediatric cancer each year. Treatment-related side effects, psychosocial challenges, and frequent school absences may adversely impact learning and the education experience among these youth. Efforts to enhance interagency collaboration between health care settings and community schools are imperative to facilitate school reintegration.

The toll of transition: Caregiver perceptions of family adjustment during the transition off pediatric cancer therapy.

Objective: The role of transition-focused psychology appointments in managing the transition off therapy is unclear. The objective of this research was to explore caregiver perceived familial distress and the role of psychology in preparing families for transition.

Methods: Fifty-seven caregivers of youth, who finished treatment, completed an online questionnaire through a quality improvement project on experiences of families at transition.

Clinical Importance of Free Thyroxine Concentration Decline After Radiotherapy for Pediatric and Adolescent Brain Tumors.

Context: Clinical significance of a decline in free T4 (FT4) concentrations across the reference range in children with brain tumors treated with radiation therapy (RT) is uncertain.

Objectives: To study trends in FT4 in children after RT and risk factors and health outcomes associated with plasma FT4 concentrations.

Design And Setting: Longitudinal, single-center retrospective cohort study.

Folate pathway polymorphisms predict deficits in attention and processing speed after childhood leukemia therapy.

Background: Neurocognitive impairment occurs in 20-40% of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) survivors, possibly mediated by folate depletion and homocysteine elevation following methotrexate treatment. We evaluated the relationship between folate pathway polymorphisms and neurocognitive impairment after childhood ALL chemotherapy.

Procedure: Seventy-two childhood ALL survivors treated with chemotherapy alone underwent a neurocognitive battery consisting of: Trail Making Tests A (TMTA) and B (TMTB), Grooved Pegboard Test Dominant-Hand and Nondominant-Hand, Digit Span subtest, and Verbal Fluency Test.

A comparative study of the single crystal X-ray determination and molecular modelling of the binding of oligomycin to ATP synthase.

Recently published X-ray structures of three common forms, A, B and C, of oligomycin, including absolute configurations, are investigated to examine their binding to ATP Synthase. The X-ray studies reveal regions with differences in three-dimensional structure and hydrogen bonding propensity between the oligomycins, which may be associated with their potential to bind to sites on ATP Synthase. Computational docking studies carried out using MOE with the X-ray structures and an homology model of the F(O) domain of ATP Synthase from Escherichia coli, are used to derive an induced fit pocket.

Antagonist binding in the rat muscarinic receptor A study by docking and X-ray crystallography.

A series of agonists to the rat muscarinic receptor have been docked computationally to the active site of a homology model of rat M1 muscarinic receptor. The agonists were modelled on the X-ray crystal structure of atropine, which is reported here and the docking studies are shown to reproduce correctly the order of experimental binding affinities for the agonists as well as indicate where there appear to be inconsistencies in the experimental data. The crystal and molecular structure of atropine (tropine tropate; alpha-[hydroxymethyl]benzeneacetic acid 8-methyl[3.