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Traumatic childhood events are some of the few identifiable and to some extent preventable causes of psychiatric illness. Children exposed to severely stressful events may react with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and this may impact their level of function in daily life, their future development and mental health. The traumatic stress model suggests that traumatic stress in the family, community violence, and other traumas are regarded as additive environmental factors that can outweigh protective compensatory factors and thus interact with individual vulnerabilities. This study is based on prospective panel data including the whole population of children born in Denmark from 1984 to 1994, who are followed from age 7 to age 18 (N = 679,000) in the window between 2001 and 2012. Risk factors for first-time diagnose with PTSD are analyzed by the discrete time log-odd model. We found a lifetime prevalence of 2.3% PTSD in school-age children (n = 15,636). In accordance with the model, indicators of traumatic stress in the family, family disintegration, community violence, and individual vulnerabilities predicted later diagnose with PTSD. Individual neurodevelopmental disorder – especially autism (adjusted Odds Ratio (OR 7.1) and ADHD (OR 10.7) – were predicative of PTSD. The results cooperated the traumatic stress model. Some results were inconsistent with the traumatic stress model e.g., parental substance abuse were associated with less than expected PTSD in school-age children when adjusted for other risk factors. This indicates that PTSD may be underestimated in these groups. PTSD diagnoses in administrative records underestimate the prevalence, systematically. Efforts to increase PTSD screening may allow for better management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism is associated with genomic instability, which is regulated by telomere length (TL) and index of global methylation (LINE-1). This study will determine relative TL (RTL) and LINE-1 methylation percentage for 69 patients and 33 control subjects to evaluate their potential role as biomarkers for autism. The results displayed a significant decrease of both RTL and LINE-1 methylation in autistic cases relative to controls (P < 0.001). Analysis of receiver operating characteristics curve revealed that both of RTL and LINE-1 methylation percentage have the ability to serve as autism biomarkers (area under the curve = 0.817 and 0.889, respectively). The statistical analysis revealed positive correlation between the two biomarkers (correlation coefficient = 0.439 and P < 0.001). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an earlier investigation, the authors assessed the reliability of the ADI-R when multiple clinicians evaluated a single case, here a female 3 year old toddler suspected of having an autism spectrum disorder (Cicchetti et al. in J Autism Dev Disord 38:764-770, ). Applying the clinical criteria of Cicchetti and Sparrow (Am J Men Def 86:127-137, ); and those of Cicchetti et al. (Child Neuropsychol 126-137, ): 74 % of the ADI-R items showed 100 % agreement; 6 % showed excellent agreement; 7 % showed good agreement; 3 % manifested average agreement; and the remaining 10 % evidenced poor agreement. In this follow-up investigation, the authors described and applied a novel method for determining levels of statistical significance of the reliability coefficients obtained in the earlier investigation. It is based upon a modification of the Z test for comparing a given level of inter-examiner reliability with a lower limit value of 70 % (Dixon and Massey in Introduction to statistical analysis. McGraw-Hill, New York, ). Results indicated that every item producing a clinically acceptable level of inter-examiner reliability was also statistically significant. However, the reverse was not true, since a number of the items with statistically significant reliability levels did not reach levels of agreement that were clinically meaningful. This indicated that clinical significance was an accurate marker of statistical significance. The generalization of these findings to other areas of diagnostic interest and importance is also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]