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The Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques of Toulouse (in Southwest France) is an ancient hospital officially existing since the 16th century and initially dedicated to the treatment of the poor and the destitute. In the 18th century, it became a hospital in the "modern" sense of the word, by maintaining health and trying to cure diseases. The first official traces of professional dental care in the Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques by a dental surgeon date from 1780. From this period, the Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques had a dentist to treat "paupers" in the early years. The first "officially" recorded dentist was named Pierre Delga, known for having treated the French Queen Marie-Antoinette for a difficult extraction. Delga also provided dental care to the famous French writer and philosopher Voltaire. The aim of this article is to relate the history of this hospital along with French dentistry, and to advance the hypothesis that the Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques, now a hospital site of the Toulouse University Hospital, is probably the oldest building in Europe still in activity and still hosting a dentistry department., (Copyright 2023 © American Academy of the History of Dentistry.)

This study examined grammaticality and complexity of sentences in monolingual Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). A group of SLI children (n = 13), mean age 6, was compared to a control group (CCG) matched by age (n = 11), and a younger control group (LCG) with similar linguistic development (n = 13). Grammaticality and complexity of sentences were analysed including identification and counting of: a) simple and complex sentences, b) grammatical and ungrammatical sentences, and c) types of grammatical errors. SLI children were found to be more ungrammatical than CCG in both simple and complex sentences. Considering the number of errors in all sentences produced, SLI children commit more errors than both control groups. Complexity of sentences did not show statistical differences among groups. Future research should explore in further detail the types of errors made by monolingual Spanish-speaking SLI children.

Introduction: Preterm infants are prone to present language development difficulties. There is evidence that verbal deficits are common and adversely affect social interaction as well as school learning. In Chile, these skills are not evaluated by the premature follow-up program; therefore, the extent of this problem is unknown. The objective of this study is to describe the language difficulties of a group of preschoolers with a history of extreme prematurity., Patients and Methods: Thirty children aged 4 and 5 years old, with a history of extreme prematurity, but without severe neurological damage or hearing loss were evaluated through language tests at the Premature Follow-up Polyclinic of the Eastern Cordillera Health Reference Center., Results: 73.3% of the children assessed had deficits in some area of the language. Of these, 77.3% had comprehensive and expressive difficulties. In this group, 86.4% showed significant difficulties in narrative skills., Discussion: A high preterm infant proportion presents language difficulties in preschool, resulting in the need of including specific intervention programs that promote better language development for this population.

Pretargeting techniques using the avidin-biotin system have shown encouraging results in both diagnostic and therapeutic clinical trials. It has been shown that in cancer therapy the ideal agent to be used for pretargeting should have a plasma half-life longer than avidin and lower immunogenicity than streptavidin in order for these procedures to be applied safely and repeatedly in patients. We prepared a recombinant form of avidin with no carbohydrates and avidins, biochemically modified either by decreasing the positive charges with succinic anhydride or by linking polyethylene glycol (PEG) at three different molar ratios and evaluated their in vivo behaviour after i.p. administration in mice. The succinylation and PEGylation of avidin increased the plasma half-life proportionally to the degree of protein modification. The procedures, however, affected the biotin binding to some extent. The biodistribution studies showed that, for all six time points (ranging from 20 min to 18 h post-injection), the liver and kidney to blood ratios were lower for PEGylated avidins than native, recombinant and succinyl avidin. Recombinant and low PEGylated avidin evoked an immune response in all mice after at least three injections. Native, recombinant and succinyl avidins showed higher serum titres than PEGylated avidins. In conclusion, the conjugation of avidin to PEG chains (n = 7) originates a compound with a suitable blood clearance, low immunogenicity and concurrent low cross-reactivity with avidin.