Influence of etiologic factors on speech perception of cochlear-implanted children.

Objective: Rehabilitation success in cochlear implant patients is influenced by many factors. Influence of different etiologies of deafness on rehabilitation outcome is assessed.

Study Design: Retrospective survey of patients.

Suitability of auditory speech sound evaluation (A§E®) in German cochlear implant patients.

A§E® is an audiological evaluation tool based on speech sounds as stimuli and was developed by The Eargroup, Antwerp. It consists of three levels: detection, discrimination and identification of phonemes and is a sufficient tool to measure supraliminal auditory capacities in Flemish language of children 10 months and older as well as adults. The aim of this study was to test the suitability of patients for cochlear implant in Germany, using 245 consecutive measurements (141 adults, 79 children, 25 controls) in a standard test protocol for phoneme detection and discrimination, Mainzer and Göttinger in children and Freiburger in adults pre-, 3 and 6 months and 1 year after implantation.

Speech development after cochlear implantation in children from bilingual homes.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether exposure to a second language in bilingual families influences the spoken German skills after cochlear implantation. A further question was how many children with migration background are bilingual.

Study Design: Retrospective case review.

Tissue-resident mesenchymal stem cells attract peripheral blood neutrophils and enhance their inflammatory activity in response to microbial challenge.

Human MSCs may respond to TLR ligation, and recent research has suggested that many tissues contain tissue-specific MSCs, possibly located in periendothelial and perivascular regions. At present, the functional consequences of these findings are unclear. We hypothesized that tissue-specific MSCs could play an instructional role during early phases of bacterial challenge.

Human nasal mucosa contains tissue-resident immunologically responsive mesenchymal stromal cells.

Multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) are present in bone marrow and other tissues such as adipose tissue, muscle, pancreas, liver, and so on. Recent evidence suggests that MSC migrate to sites of infection, inflammation, and cancer, and interact with different immune cell subsets. Here, we report for the first time on the isolation and characterization of multipotent nasal mucosa-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (nm-MSC).