Microstructural White Matter Abnormalities in Children and Adolescents With Narcolepsy Type 1.

Background: In 2010, the H1N1 Pandemrix vaccination campaign was followed by a sudden increase in narcolepsy type 1 (NT1). We investigated the brain white matter microstructure in children with onset of NT1 within two years after the Pandemrix vaccination.

Methods: We performed diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on 19 children and adolescents with NT1 and 19 healthy controls.

Finnish children who experienced narcolepsy after receiving the Pandemrix vaccine during the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic demonstrated high level of psychosocial problems.

Aim: We assessed psychosocial burdens in children who developed narcolepsy after receiving the Pandemrix H1N1 vaccine during the 2009-2010 pandemic. Parental quality of life was also assessed.

Methods: This multicentre study covered four of the five Finnish University Hospital Districts, which dealt with about 90% of the paediatric narcolepsy cases after the Pandemrix vaccination.

Newborn Brain Function Is Affected by Fetal Exposure to Maternal Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors.

Recent experimental animal studies have shown that fetal exposure to serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) affects brain development. Modern recording methods and advanced computational analyses of scalp electroencephalography (EEG) have opened a possibility to study if comparable changes are also observed in the human neonatal brain. We recruited mothers using SRI during pregnancy (n = 22) and controls (n = 62).

[Update on current care guidelines: appropriate treatment of medical problems associated with Down's syndrome].

The lifetime prognosis of people with Down's syndrome has improved. Development of the services that health care and society can offer to such people is ongoing. These guidelines are targeted at defining what is required to further increase the lifespan and quality-of-life of people with Down's syndrome.

Subjects with intellectual disability and familial need for full-time special education show regional brain alterations: a voxel-based morphometry study.

Subjects attending full-time special education (SE) often have multifactorial background for their cognitive impairment, and brain MRI may show nonspecific changes. As voxel-based morphometry reveals regional volume differences, we applied this method to 119 subjects with cognitive impairments and familial need for full-time SE--graded into three levels from specific disorders of cognitive processes (level 1) to intellectual disability (IQ <70; level 3)--and to 43 age-matched controls attending mainstream education (level 0). Subjects in SE groups had smaller global brain white matter (WM), cerebrospinal fluid, and total brain volume than controls.