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Background: Interactive telemedicine applications have been progressively introduced in the assessment of cognitive and literacy skills. However, there is still a lack of research focusing on the validity of this methodology for the neuropsychological assessment of children with Specific Learning Disorder (SLD)., Methods: Seventy-nine children including 40 typically developing children (18 males, age 11.5 ± 1.06) and 39 children with SLD (24 males, age 12.3 ± 1.28) were recruited. Each participant underwent the same neuropsychological battery assessing reading accuracy, speed, and comprehension, writing, numerical processing, computation, and semantic numerical sense, twice (once during an in-person session (I) and once during a remote (R) home-based videoconference session). Four groups were subsequently defined based on the administration order. Repeated-measure-ANOVAs with assessment type (R vs. I testing) as within-subject factor and diagnosis (SLD vs. TR) and administration order (R-I vs. I-R) as between-subject factors, and between-group t-tests comparing the two assessment types within each time of administration, were run., Results: No differences emerged between I and R assessments of reading accuracy and speed, numerical processing, and computation; on the contrary, potential biases against R assessment emerged when evaluating skills in writing, reading comprehension, and semantic numerical sense. However, regardless of the assessment type, the scores obtained with I and R assessments within the same administration time point overlapped., Discussion: These results partially support the validity and reliability of the assessment of children's learning skills via a remote home-based videoconferencing system. Implementing telemedicine as an assessment tool may increase timely access to primary health care and to support research activity., Competing Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

Background: An intronic deletion within intron 2 of the DCDC2 gene encompassing the entire READ1 (hereafter, READ1d) has been associated in both children with developmental dyslexia (DD) and typical readers (TRs), with interindividual variation in reading performance and motion perception as well as with structural and functional brain alterations. Visual motion perception -- specifically processed by the magnocellular (M) stream -- has been reported to be a solid and reliable endophenotype of DD. Hence, we predicted that READ1d should affect neural activations in brain regions sensitive to M stream demands as reading proficiency changes., Methods: We investigated neural activations during two M-eliciting fMRI visual tasks (full-field sinusoidal gratings controlled for spatial and temporal frequencies and luminance contrast, and sensitivity to motion coherence at 6%, 15% and 40% dot coherence levels) in four subject groups: children with DD with/without READ1d, and TRs with/without READ1d., Results: At the Bonferroni-corrected level of significance, reading skills showed a significant effect in the right polar frontal cortex during the full-field sinusoidal gratings-M task. Regardless of the presence/absence of the READ1d, subjects with poor reading proficiency showed hyperactivation in this region of interest (ROI) compared to subjects with better reading scores. Moreover, a significant interaction was found between READ1d and reading performance in the left frontal opercular area 4 during the 15% coherent motion sensitivity task. Among subjects with poor reading performance, neural activation in this ROI during this specific task was higher for subjects without READ1d than for READ1d carriers. The difference vanished as reading skills increased., Conclusions: Our findings showed a READ1d-moderated genetic vulnerability to alterations in neural activation in the ventral attentive and salient networks during the processing of relevant stimuli in subjects with poor reading proficiency., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Objectives: To analyse how the potential exposure to air pollutants can influence the key components at the time of diagnosis of Sjögren's phenotype (epidemiological profile, sicca symptoms, and systemic disease)., Methods: For the present study, the following variables were selected for harmonization and refinement: age, sex, country, fulfilment of 2002/2016 criteria items, dry eyes, dry mouth, and overall ESSDAI score. Air pollution indexes per country were defined according to the OECD (1990-2021), including emission data of nitrogen and sulphur oxides (NO/SO), particulate matter (PM2.5 and 1.0), carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) calculated per unit of GDP, Kg per 1000 USD., Results: The results of the chi-square tests of independence for each air pollutant with the frequency of dry eyes at diagnosis showed that, except for one, all variables exhibited p-values <0.0001. The most pronounced disparities emerged in the dry eye prevalence among individuals inhabiting countries with the highest NO/SO exposure, a surge of 4.61 percentage points compared to other countries, followed by CO (3.59 points), non-methane (3.32 points), PM2.5 (3.30 points), and PM1.0 (1.60 points) exposures. Concerning dry mouth, individuals residing in countries with worse NO/SO exposures exhibited a heightened frequency of dry mouth by 2.05 percentage points (p<0.0001), followed by non-methane exposure (1.21 percentage points increase, p=0.007). Individuals inhabiting countries with the worst NO/SO, CO, and PM2.5 pollution levels had a higher mean global ESSDAI score than those in lower-risk nations (all p-values <0.0001). When systemic disease was stratified according to DAS into low, moderate, and high systemic activity levels, a heightened proportion of individuals manifesting moderate/severe systemic activity was observed in countries with worse exposures to NO/SO, CO, and PM2.5 pollutant levels., Conclusions: For the first time, we suggest that pollution levels could influence how SjD appears at diagnosis in a large international cohort of patients. The most notable relationships were found between symptoms (dryness and general body symptoms) and NO/SO, CO, and PM2.5 levels.

Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) datasets are susceptible to several confounding factors related to data quality, which is especially true in studies involving young children. With the recent trend of large-scale multicenter studies, it is more critical to be aware of the varied impacts of data quality on measures of interest. Here, we investigated data quality and its effect on different diffusion measures using a multicenter dataset. dMRI data were obtained from 691 participants (5-17 years of age) from six different centers. Six data quality metrics-contrast to noise ratio, outlier slices, and motion (absolute, relative, translation, and rotational)-and four diffusion measures-fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, tract density, and length-were computed for each of 36 major fiber tracts for all participants. The results indicated that four out of six data quality metrics (all except absolute and translation motion) differed significantly between centers. Associations between these data quality metrics and the diffusion measures differed significantly across the tracts and centers. Moreover, these effects remained significant after applying recently proposed harmonization algorithms that purport to remove unwanted between-site variation in diffusion data. These results demonstrate the widespread impact of dMRI data quality on diffusion measures. These tracts and measures have been routinely associated with individual differences as well as group-wide differences between neurotypical populations and individuals with neurological or developmental disorders. Accordingly, for analyses of individual differences or group effects (particularly in multisite dataset), we encourage the inclusion of data quality metrics in dMRI analysis., (© 2021 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Increasing evidence supports the presence of deficits in the visual magnocellular (M) system in developmental dyslexia (DD). The M system is related to the fronto-parietal attentional network. Previous neuroimaging studies have revealed reduced/absent activation within the visual M pathway in DD, but they have failed to characterize the extensive brain network activated by M stimuli. We performed a multivariate pattern analysis on a Region of Interest (ROI) level to differentiate between children with DD and age-matched typical readers (TRs) by combining full-field sinusoidal gratings, controlled for spatial and temporal frequencies and luminance contrast, and a coherent motion (CM) sensitivity task at 6%-CML6, 15%-CML15 and 40%-CML40. ROIs spanning the entire visual dorsal stream and ventral attention network (VAN) had higher discriminative weights and showed higher act1ivation in TRs than in children with DD. Of the two tasks, CM had the greatest weight when classifying TRs and children with DD in most of the ROIs spanning these streams. For the CML6, activation within the right superior parietal cortex positively correlated with reading skills. Our approach highlighted the dorsal stream and the VAN as highly discriminative areas between children with DD and TRs and allowed for a better characterization of the "dorsal stream vulnerability" underlying DD.

Background: The aim was to describe the incidence and risk factors of barotrauma in patients with the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on invasive mechanical ventilation, during the outbreak in our region (Lombardy, Italy)., Methods: The study was an electronic survey open from March 27 th to May 2 nd , 2020. Patients with COVID-19 who developed barotrauma while on invasive mechanical ventilation from 61 hospitals of the COVID-19 Lombardy Intensive Care Unit network were involved., Results: The response rate was 38/61 (62%). The incidence of barotrauma was 145/2041 (7.1%; 95%-CI: 6.1-8.3%). Only a few cases occurred with ventilatory settings that may be considered non-protective such as a plateau airway pressure >35 cmH2O (2/113 [2%]), a driving airway pressure >15 cmH2O (30/113 [27%]), or a tidal volume >8 mL/kg of ideal body weight and a plateau airway pressure >30 cmH2O (12/134 [9%])., Conclusions: Within the limits of a survey, patients with COVID-19 might be at high risk for barotrauma during invasive (and allegedly lung-protective) mechanical ventilation.