Crohn's disease shared decision making intervention leads to more patients choosing combination therapy: a cluster randomised controlled trial.

Background: Crohn's disease requires effective patient-clinician communication for successful illness and medication management. Shared decision making (SDM) has been suggested to improve communication around early intensive therapy. However, effective evidence-based SDM interventions for Crohn's disease are lacking, and the impact of SDM on Crohn's disease decision making and choice of therapy is unclear.

Performance Characteristics of a Clinical Decision Support Tool for Disease Complications in Crohn's Disease.

Background: Patients with Crohn's disease (CD) are at risk of complications. Performance characteristics of a decision support tool assessing the risk of CD complications were evaluated.

Methods: CDPATH (formerly called the Personalized Risk and Outcome Prediction Tool [PROSPECT]) was calibrated and validated in 2 cohorts.

From Schools to Scans: A Neuroeducational Approach to Comorbid Math and Reading Disabilities.

We bridge two analogous concepts of comorbidity, dyslexia-dyscalculia and reading-mathematical disabilities, in neuroscience and education, respectively. We assessed the cognitive profiles of 360 individuals (mean age 25.79 ± 13.

White matter but not grey matter predicts change in reading skills after intervention.

This study examined changes in white matter microstructure and grey matter volume, cortical thickness, and cortical surface area before and after reading intervention. Participants included 22 average readers and 13 dyslexic readers (8-9 years old in third grade); the dyslexic readers were enrolled in reading intervention programs at their elementary school. Participants completed scans of diffusion tensor imaging and T1-weighted MRI before and after 3 months of instruction.

E.E. Cummings and dyslexia.

We suggest that the American poet E.E. Cummings was probably mildly dyslexic.

Longitudinal outcomes of an individualized and intensive reading intervention for third grade students.

Early intervention is known to reduce reading disabilities; however, treatment response is variable, and some students have persistent deficits that require intensive supports. This study examined the immediate and 1-year outcomes of an individualized and intensive reading program for third grade students, which was delivered throughout the school day for an average of 189 hr of instruction over 3 months. These students' performances were compared with two comparison groups, including poor readers who received small group supports and good readers who did not have additional reading instruction.

Effect of reading intervention and task difficulty on orthographic and phonological reading systems in the brain.

Children with poor reading skills have differences in brain function when compared to typically-developing readers, and there may also be changes in the brain following reading intervention. However, most functional imaging studies focus on phonological reading tasks with one level of task difficulty. The purpose of this study was to compare good and poor readers on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tasks of orthography (spelling) and phonology (rhyming) before and after 3 months of school-based intervention.

A validated web-based tool to display individualised Crohn's disease predicted outcomes based on clinical, serologic and genetic variables.

Background: Early treatment for Crohn's disease (CD) with immunomodulators and/or anti-TNF agents improves outcomes in comparison to a slower 'step up' algorithm. However, there remains a limited ability to identify those who would benefit most from early intensive therapy.

Aim: To develop a validated, individualised, web-based tool for patients and clinicians to visualise individualised risks for developing Crohn's disease complications.

A Study of the Relationships Among Chinese Multicharacter Words, Subtypes of Readers, and Instructional Methods.

This article reports the results of two studies examining the effectiveness of the whole-word and analytic instructional methods in teaching different subtypes of readers (students with normal reading performance, surface dyslexics, phonological dyslexics, and both dyslexic patterns) and four kinds of Chinese two-character words (two regular [RR], two irregular [II], one regular, one irregular [RI], and one irregular, one regular [IR]). The approaches employed were the analytic method, which focuses on highlighting the phonological components of words, and the whole-word method, which focuses on learning by sight. Two studies were conducted among a sample of 40 primary school students with different reading patterns.

Can non-interactive language input benefit young second-language learners?

To fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible - e.g.

A Longitudinal Examination of the Persistence of Late Emerging Reading Disabilities.

There are some children who encounter unexpected reading difficulties in the fourth grade. This phenomenon has been described as late emerging reading disabilities (LERD). Using Grade 4 as a starting point, this study examined the reading development of 964 children between kindergarten and Grade 7.

Effects of a phonological awareness program on English reading and spelling among Hong Kong Chinese ESL children.

This study investigated the effects of a 12-week language-enriched phonological awareness instruction on 76 Hong Kong young children who were learning English as a second language. The children were assigned randomly to receive the instruction on phonological awareness skills embedded in vocabulary learning activities or comparison instruction which consisted of vocabulary learning and writing tasks but no direct instruction in phonological awareness skills. They were tested on receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness at the syllable, rhyme and phoneme levels, reading, and spelling in English before and after the program implementation.

Reactivity to stress and the cognitive components of math disability in grade 1 children.

This study investigated the relationship among working memory, processing speed, math performance, and reactivity to stress in 83 Grade 1 children. Specifically, 39 children with math disability (MD) were compared to 44 children who are typically achieving (TA) in mathematics. It is the first study to use a physiological index of stress (salivary cortisol levels) to measure children's reactivity while completing tasks that assess the core components of MD: working memory for numbers, working memory for words, digits backward, letter number sequence, digit span forward, processing speed for numbers and words, block rotation, and math tasks.

Brain anatomy, processing speed, and reading in school-age children.

This study was conducted to verify, prospectively, the ability of an anatomical risk index (ARI) constructed from seven anatomical measures of cerebral volume and perisylvian asymmetry to predict reading ability in 43 children aged 9 to 18. We found that negative ARIs (low cerebral volume and symmetry) were associated with poor reading ability only in children with low processing speed. Regression analysis showed that anatomy, speed, and an interaction term predicted 53% of the variance in real word reading (p < .

The improvement of reading skills of L1 and ESL children using a Response to Intervention (RtI) Model.

This study examined the development of literacy skills in children in a district that used a Response to Intervention (RTI) model. The district included children whose first language was English and children who were learning English as a second language (ESL). Tasks measuring phonological awareness, lexical access, and syntactic awareness were administered when the children entered school in kindergarten at age 5.

Real-time tool to display the predicted disease course and treatment response for children with Crohn's disease.

Background: Immunomodulators and biologics are effective treatments for children with Crohn's disease (CD). The challenge of communicating the anticipated disease course with and without therapy to patients and parents is a barrier to the timely use of these agents. The aim of this project was to develop a tool to graphically display the predicted risks of CD and expected benefits of therapy.

Educational outcomes among survivors of childhood cancer in British Columbia, Canada: report of the Childhood/Adolescent/Young Adult Cancer Survivors (CAYACS) Program.

Background: Increased survival of patients with childhood cancer has resulted in a growing population of survivors within the education system, many of whom may experience educational difficulties. The current study provides a comprehensive assessment of survivors' educational achievements.

Methods: Seven hundred eighty-two childhood cancer survivors from the British Columbia (BC) Cancer Registry who attended BC schools from 1995 to 2004, were compared with a randomly selected comparison group of 8386 BC school children.

Perspectives on dyslexia.

Dyslexia, or a reading disability, occurs when an individual has significant difficulty with speed and accuracy of word decoding. Comprehension of text and spelling are also affected. The diagnosis of dyslexia involves the use of reading tests, but the continuum of reading performance means that any cutoff point is arbitrary.

Predictors of word-level literacy amongst Grade 3 children in five diverse languages.

Groups of Grade 3 children were tested on measures of word-level literacy and undertook tasks that required the ability to associate sounds with letter sequences and that involved visual, auditory and phonological-processing skills. These groups came from different language backgrounds in which the language of instruction was Arabic, Chinese, English, Hungarian or Portuguese. Similar measures were used across the groups, with tests being adapted to be appropriate for the language of the children.

Stability of computational deficits in math learning disability from second through fifth grades.

This study utilized growth modeling to investigate the stability of two computational deficits that are strongly associated with math learning disability (MLD)-procedural deficits and fact fluency deficits. Math "deficit" was defined in two ways-having scores in the lower 10th percentile (MLD) and between the 11th and 25th percentiles (LA, low achieving). The longitudinal sample was composed of 214 children.

Retrospective analyses of the reading development of grade 4 students with reading disabilities: risk status and profiles over 5 years.

This study presents a longitudinal examination of the development of reading and reading-related skills of 22 Grade 4 children identified as having reading disabilities (RD) who had been followed since kindergarten. The analyses were conducted to investigate the patterns of emergence of RD as well as reading ability and risk status across the 5 years. The findings of the study are presented with an examination of the trajectories of the children with RD as compared to Grade 4 typical readers (matched for grade, gender, language status, and school) with a similar profile on literacy skills in kindergarten.

Supporting dyslexic adults--a need for clarity (and more research): a critical review of the Rice report 'Developmental Dyslexia in Adults: A Research Review'.

Evidence based teaching methods are desirable not only for economic efficiency but also important for ensuring the learner is engaged in meaningful activity. Therefore, a review of the research that could inform both teaching practice and future research is to be welcomed. However, the NRDC review 'Developmental Dyslexia in Adults: A Research Review' contains so many methodological flaws, including the highly selective way in which the research has been used, that the overall value of the report is questionable.

The double-deficit hypothesis: a comprehensive analysis of the evidence.

The double-deficit hypothesis of developmental dyslexia proposes that deficits in phonological processing and naming speed represent independent sources of dysfunction in dyslexia. The present article is a review of the evidence for the double-deficit hypothesis, including a discussion of recent findings related to the hypothesis. Studies in this area have been characterized by variability in methodology--how dyslexia is defined and identified, and how dyslexia subtypes are classified.