Do thyroid hormones mediate the effects of starvation on mood in adolescent girls with eating disorders?

In the eating disorders (ED) comorbid depression is common and clinical experience suggests that it is partly related to starvation. Starvation affects thyroid hormone status and thyroid hypofunction is in turn associated with depressed mood. We have therefore investigated the possibility that thyroid hormones and starvation are associated with mood in ED.

Isolation of non-activated monocytes from human umbilical cord blood.

Problem: Methods for monocyte purification are common but few work with umbilical cord monocytes that do not activate the cell for subsequent culture analysis.

Methods Of Study: The collection procedure avoids use of needles and procedures that variably activate blood clotting and uses a purification procedure that involves diluted Ficoll, autologous serum to remove platelets and 42% and 51% Percoll step gradients for the final purification. The resulting monocytes were stimulated with bacterial lipopolysaccharide and formalin-treated bacteria Escherichia coli and group B streptococci (GBS) to secrete TNF-alpha and IL-1beta, measured by ELISA.

Evaluation of and treatment for monosymptomatic enuresis: a standardization document from the International Children's Continence Society.

Purpose: We provide updated, clinically useful recommendations for treating children with monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis.

Materials And Methods: Evidence was gathered from the literature and experience was gathered from the authors with priority given to evidence when present. The draft document was circulated among all members of the International Children's Continence Society as well as other relevant expert associations before completion.

Reboxetine in therapy-resistant enuresis: a retrospective evaluation.

Objective: Imipramine is the only evidence-based treatment available for enuretic children resistant to standard therapy. The drug's antienuretic effect is probably due to noradrenergic facilitation. The drug is, however, potentially cardiotoxic.

Endoscopic treatment of vesicoureteral reflux: current practice and the need for multifactorial assessment.

Vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) affects around 1% of all children. It carries an increased risk of febrile urinary-tract infections (UTIs) and is associated with impaired renal function. Antibiotic prophylaxis is an established approach to managing the condition, but it does not protect against UTI and encourages bacterial resistance.

Triiodothyronine is an indicator of nutritional status in adolescent girls with eating disorders.

Aim: Circulating thyroid hormone concentrations are influenced by nonthyroidal disease and changes in nutritional status. We studied thyroid hormones as possible indicators of nutrition in adolescent girls with eating disorders.

Method: Blood samples for analyses of thyroid hormones were obtained at 360 assessments of 298 patients and biweekly during 42 treatment periods in 36 patients.

Diagnosis and management of nocturnal enuresis.

Purpose Of Review: To highlight recent advances in enuresis research.

Recent Findings: Many discoveries have distanced us from the time when bedwetting was considered a psychiatric disorder. Instead, it is now agreed that nocturnal polyuria, detrusor overactivity, and high arousal thresholds are, in various combinations, central to enuresis pathogenesis.

Deficits in motor co-ordination and attention at 3 years of age predict motor deviations in 6.5-year-old children who needed neonatal intensive care.

Background: A total of 189 children without major impairments who needed neonatal intensive care (NIC) were followed up at ages 3 and 6.5 years.

Aim: To determine the prevalence of different motor deviations at age 6.

HLA-B27 predicts a more extended disease with increasing age at onset in boys with juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

Objective: Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is a heterogeneous condition with very few clinical and laboratory signs that can help predict the course and severity of the disease in the individual patient. The cell-surface antigen HLA-B27 is well known to be associated with spondyloarthropathies, reactive arthritis, and enthesitis. HLA-B27 plays an important role in the classification of JIA, since evidence of sacroiliitis most often evolves after years of arthritis in other joints.

Tolterodine and imipramine in refractory enuresis; a placebo-controlled crossover study.

The anticholinergic drug tolterodine has been suggested to be useful in therapy-resistant enuresis. Imipramine has a proven efficiency in unselected enuretic patients, but due to its side-effect profile it is only indicated, if at all, in therapy-resistant cases. We therefore compared these two drugs to placebo.

Increase in beta-amyloid levels in cerebrospinal fluid of children with Down syndrome.

Background: Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) invariably develop Alzheimer's disease (AD) during their life span. It is therefore of importance to study young DS patients when trying to elucidate early events in AD pathogenesis.

Aim: To investigate how levels of different amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptides, as well as tau and phosphorylated tau, in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from children with DS change over time.

Assessment of disease activity in juvenile idiopathic arthritis. The number and the size of joints matter.

Objective: Variables for assessment of disease activity of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) were studied, in order to develop a disease activity score for children with JIA.

Methods: One randomly chosen hospital visit was studied for each of 312 patients with JIA, with regard to disease activity variables. The physician global assessment score visual analog scale (physician GA) was used as a dependent variable in comparisons between potential disease activity variables.

Haematological changes and iron status in teenage girls with eating disorders and weight loss-the importance of menstrual status.

Aim: To study haematological changes and iron stores in teenage girls with eating disorders and weight loss.

Methods: Blood haemoglobin concentration, white blood cell and thrombocyte count and serum ferritin concentration were measured at assessments of 446 subjects.

Results: Haemoglobin concentrations, leukocyte and thrombocyte counts were related to weight and rate of weight loss but were largely within reference ranges.

Associations of motor co-ordination and attention with motor-perceptual development in 3-year-old preterm and full-term children who needed neonatal intensive care.

Background: Children who have needed neonatal intensive care (NIC) are considered to be at risk for deficits such as developmental co-ordination disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. By assessing motor-perceptual development, motor co-ordination and attention already at 3 years of age, it might be possible to identify such deficits earlier than they are today.

Aim: To investigate the motor-perceptual development in a group of 202 NIC children but had no major impairments, to describe associations of deficits in co-ordination and attention with motor-perceptual delays, and to estimate the prevalence of NIC children with combined deficits together with a motor-perceptual delay.

A mutation in the fast skeletal muscle troponin I gene causes myopathy and distal arthrogryposis.

Objective: To describe a three-generation family with distal arthrogryposis associated with myopathy and caused by a mutation in the gene encoding for sarcomeric thin filament protein troponin I, TNNI2.

Methods: The authors performed clinical investigations and reviewed medical records. Muscle biopsy specimens were obtained for morphologic analysis.

Medical follow-up visits in adults 5-25 years after treatment for childhood acute leukaemia, lymphoma or Wilms' tumour.

Aim: One aspect of organizing medical follow-up for adult survivors of childhood cancer is to determine to what extent the former patient experiences a need for health services. In the present paper, we studied how the healthcare needs, both subjectively and objectively, were fulfilled for our former patients.

Methods: 335 survivors over 18 y of age, with a follow-up time of more than 5 y after completion of therapy, were sent a questionnaire probing their present use of health services.

The standardization of terminology of lower urinary tract function in children and adolescents: report from the Standardisation Committee of the International Children's Continence Society.

Purpose: We updated the terminology in the field of pediatric lower urinary tract function.

Materials And Methods: Discussions were held of the board of the International Children's Continence Society and an extensive reviewing process was done involving all members of the International Children's Continence Society as well as other experts in the field.

Results And Conclusions: New definitions and a standardized terminology are provided, taking into account changes in the adult sphere and new research results.

Treatment of central precocious puberty.

The problems of central precocious puberty (CPP) are serious enough to the patient to deserve treatment. There is a general consensus among paediatric endocrinologists that the treatment of true CPP (i.e.

Reboxetine in therapy-resistant enuresis: results and pathogenetic implications.

Objective: To investigate whether the norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor reboxetine is effective as a non-cardiotoxic alternative to imipramine in the treatment of therapy-resistant enuresis.

Material And Methods: Twenty-two children with severely socially handicapping enuresis resistant to urotherapy, the enuresis alarm, desmopressin and anticholinergics (all children had tried all these treatments) were given reboxetine, 4-8 mg at bed-time, for compassionate reasons.

Results: Thirteen of the children (59%) achieved complete dryness with reboxetine, either as monotherapy or combined with desmopressin.

Language skills at age 6 years in Swedish children screened for language delay at 2(1/2) years of age.

Unlabelled: This study concerns language outcome in 6-y-old children who participated in a longitudinal community-based study of 105 children screened for language delay (LD) at 2(1/2) y of age. The purpose was to investigate (1) whether results from the 2(1/2)-y screening were persistent at 6 y of age, and (2) what language domains at age 6 were difficult for (a) children with LD at age 2(1/2) y and (b) children with normal language (LN) at the same age. Significant differences between LD and LN at age 2(1/2) y were persistent at age 6.

Identification of health problems at 18 months of age--a task for physicians or child health nurses?

Background: Several studies have questioned the rationality of repeated routine health examinations by physicians during the first years of life. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the population-based 18-month health examination and compare the yield of new health problems identified by physicians in 1994 with the yield identified by child health centre (CHC) nurses in 2000.

Methods: Two populations of children were invited to their 18-month health examination during one year, the first in 1994 and the second in 2000.

Diuretic treatment of nocturnal enuresis.

Objective: Nocturnal polyuria is considered a major pathogenetic factor in nocturnal enuresis, and the antidiuretic drug desmopressin, given at bed-time, is consequently recognized as a first-line treatment alternative. The aim of this open, non-randomized study was to see whether diuretic medication, given in the afternoon, could give similar therapeutic benefit.

Material And Methods: Sixty-three children suffering from primary, monosymptomatic, nocturnal enuresis were included in the study by their primary care paediatrician.

Normal spontaneous cortisol secretion in children after autologous bone marrow transplantation.

Aim: To describe spontaneous cortisol secretion in children after autologous bone marrow transplantation (BMT) for acute leukaemia and lymphoma.

Methods: Spontaneous cortisol secretion was analysed in 39 children before and after BMT. Thirteen patients were conditioned with chemotherapy only (group 1), and 26 patients also with total body irradiation (TBI).

Medical assessment of adolescent girls with eating disorders: an evaluation of symptoms and signs of starvation.

Aim: To investigate the prevalence of symptoms and signs related to starvation at the initial examination of adolescent girls with eating disorders (ED).

Methods: Two hundred and eleven girls with eating disorders recruited for a multicentre research and evaluation programme of six specialist eating disorder services in Sweden have been studied. The presence or absence of 12 symptoms, reported by the patients, and 16 signs, observed by the examiners, were registered and related to body weight.