The decision to disclose to your child they are a childhood cancer survivor: a qualitative study of barriers and facilitators using the theoretical domain framework.

Purpose: Childhood cancer survivors are at increased lifetime risk of morbidity and mortality, but adherence to periodic surveillance is suboptimal. One of the reasons that adult survivors of childhood cancer do not complete the recommended surveillance is that their parents may not have disclosed their cancer history to them. We sought to identify key barriers and enablers to talking to children about their cancer history.

Language and reading impairments are associated with increased prevalence of non-right-handedness.

Handedness has been studied for association with language-related disorders because of its link with language hemispheric dominance. No clear pattern has emerged, possibly because of small samples, publication bias, and heterogeneous criteria across studies. Non-right-handedness (NRH) frequency was assessed in N = 2503 cases with reading and/or language impairment and N = 4316 sex-matched controls identified from 10 distinct cohorts (age range 6-19 years old; European ethnicity) using a priori set criteria.

Identification of brain cell types underlying genetic association with word reading and correlated traits.

Neuroimaging studies implicate multiple cortical regions in reading ability/disability. However, the neural cell types integral to the reading process are unknown. To contribute to this gap in knowledge, we integrated genetic results from genome-wide association studies for word reading (n = 5054) with gene expression datasets from adult/fetal human brain.

High-frequency ultrasound-guided intrathecal injections in a young mouse model: Targeting the central nervous system in drug delivery.

Background: Intrathecal injections provide important access to the central nervous system for delivery of anesthetic, analgesic or chemotherapeutic drugs that do not otherwise cross the blood-brain barrier. The administration of drugs via this route in animal models is challenging due to an inability to visualize the small target space during injection. Successful drug delivery therefore requires expertise in indirectly assessing vertebral and spinal cord anatomy and gaining advanced procedural skills.

Hypothesis-driven genome-wide association studies provide novel insights into genetics of reading disabilities.

Reading Disability (RD) is often characterized by difficulties in the phonology of the language. While the molecular mechanisms underlying it are largely undetermined, loci are being revealed by genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In a previous GWAS for word reading (Price, 2020), we observed that top single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were located near to or in genes involved in neuronal migration/axon guidance (NM/AG) or loci implicated in autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Language Difficulties in School-Age Children With Developmental Dyslexia.

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a common reading disability, affecting 5% to 11% of children in North America. Children classified as having DD often have a history of early language delay (ELD) or language impairments. Nevertheless, studies have reported conflicting results as to the association between DD-ELD and the extent of current language difficulties in children with DD.

Genome-wide association study of word reading: Overlap with risk genes for neurodevelopmental disorders.

Reading disabilities (RD) are the most common neurocognitive disorder, affecting 5% to 17% of children in North America. These children often have comorbid neurodevelopmental/psychiatric disorders, such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The genetics of RD and their overlap with other disorders is incompletely understood.

Brain Development and Heart Function after Systemic Single-Agent Chemotherapy in a Mouse Model of Childhood Leukemia Treatment.

Purpose: Chemotherapy for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) can cause late-appearing side effects in survivors that affect multiple organs, including the heart and brain. However, the complex ALL treatment regimen makes it difficult to isolate the causes of these side effects and impossible to separate the contributions of individual chemotherapy agents by clinical observation. Using a mouse model, we therefore assessed each of eight representative, systemically-administered ALL chemotherapy agents for their impact on postnatal brain development and heart function.

Characterizing neurocognitive late effects in childhood leukemia survivors using a combination of neuropsychological and cognitive neuroscience measures.

Knowledge about cognitive late effects in survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is largely based on standardized neuropsychological measures and parent reports. To examine whether cognitive neuroscience paradigms provided additional insights into neurocognitive and behavioral late effects in ALL survivors, we assessed cognition and behavior using a selection of cognitive neuroscience tasks and standardized measures probing domains previously demonstrated to be affected by chemotherapy. 130 ALL survivors and 158 control subjects, between 8 and 18 years old at time of testing, completed the n-back (working memory) and stop-signal (response inhibition) tasks.

Brain structure, working memory and response inhibition in childhood leukemia survivors.

Introduction: Survival rates for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) approach 95%. At the same time, there is growing concern that chemotherapy causes alterations in brain development and cognitive abilities. We performed MRI measurements of white and gray matter volume to explore how variation in brain structure may be related to cognitive abilities in ALL survivors and healthy controls.