WEEK IN REVIEW

NewNASETPublications and Articles of Interest in Special Education and Disabilities That Were Reported This Week

December 19, 2014 - Vol 10, Issue 50

New This Week on NASET

Raised Asthma Risk Seen for Toddlers Who Share Bed With Parents

Toddlers who share a bed with their parents may have an increased risk of developing asthma later in childhood, a new study finds. The study included more than 6,100 mothers in the Netherlands who provided information about wheezing and asthma symptoms in their children every year between ages 1 and 6. Children who shared a bed with their parents during infancy (2 months old) did not have an increased risk of developing asthma by the time they were 6 years old. However, children who shared a bed with their parents when they were toddlers (age 24 months) were more likely to have wheezing later at ages 3 years to 6 years, and of being diagnosed with asthma by age 6 years. To read more,click here

Brain Inflammation a Hallmark of Autism, Study Shows

Brain inflammation, triggered by an overactive immune system, is common among people with autism, a new study finds. However, this inflammation does not cause the developmental disorder. Rather, it's a response to the different factors that can trigger autism, the researchers stressed. Their findings are based on autopsies performed on 72 brains of people with and without autism. In the brains of those who had autism when they were alive, a certain type of cell had its genes for inflammation permanently turned on. To read more,click here

Almost Half of U.S. Kids Suffer Traumatic Stress, Study Shows

New research suggests that almost half of U.S. kids experience traumas that can disrupt their development. "This study tells us that adverse childhood experiences are common among U.S. children and, as demonstrated in adult studies, have lifelong impacts that begin early in life," study author Christina Bethell, a professor in the department of population, family and reproductive health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said in a Hopkins news release. The researchers reached their conclusions by analyzing the results of a 2011-2012 survey of the parents of more than 95,000 children under the age of 17. To read more, click here

Abnormalities Found in Brains of Young Bipolar Patients Who Try Suicide

Teens and young adults who attempted suicide were found to have abnormalities in the frontal areas of their brains, a new study says. Researchers conducted brain scans on 68 participants, aged 14 to 25, with bipolar disorder, a mental illness that causes extreme emotional highs and lows. Of those patients, 26 had attempted suicide. Brain scans were also done on a control group of 45 teens and young adults without bipolar disorder. Compared to bipolar patients who had not attempted suicide and those in the control group, the participants who attempted suicide had abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex and related areas of the brain. To read more,click here

Disability-Related Hate Crimes Down

The number of reported hate crimes targeting people with disabilities fell last year, the FBI says. There were 92 hate crime offenses based on disability bias recorded in 2013, according to statistics released this week from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. That's down from the year prior when 106 incidents were reported. The decline mirrors a drop in the overall number of hate crimes documented. Last year, the FBI logged 5,928 criminal incidents, a decrease from 6,573 in 2012. To read more,click here

TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE WEEK

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Feds: IDEA Still Applies When Students Incarcerated

Kids with disabilities have the right to a free appropriate public education complete with academics, therapies and other supports even if they're locked up, federal officials say. In new guidance, the Obama administration is reminding states and local agencies that students do not relinquish their rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act if they are incarcerated. "The fact that a student has been charged with or convicted of a crime does not diminish his or her substantive rights or the procedural safeguards and remedies provided under the IDEA to students with disabilities and their parents," wrote the U.S. Department of Education's Melody Musgrove and Michael Yudin in a letter being sent this week to state and local officials responsible for educating youth in correctional facilities. To read more,click here

Technology Helps Manage Diabetes: FDA

Technology can ease some of the burden of managing diabetes, possibly getting blood sugar levels within safe ranges more often, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says. People with diabetes don't make or use the hormone insulin properly. Insulin is needed to convert glucose from food into energy. Insulin pumps are devices that deliver a steady flow of insulin, even while you sleep. The pump is about the size of a pager and is worn outside the body. It's connected to a tube that carries insulin from the pump to another tube inserted just under the skin. This tube has to be changed every few days. To read more,click here

Causal Link Between Antibiotics, Childhood Asthma Dismissed

In a new register study in the scientific journal BMJ, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden are able to dismiss previous claims that there is a link between the increased use of antibiotics in society and a coinciding rise in childhood asthma. The study includes half a million children and shows that exposure to antibiotics during pregnancy or early in life does not appear to increase the risk of asthma.Several previous studies have shown that if the mother is given antibiotics during pregnancy or if a small child is given antibiotics in early life, the child has an increased risk of developing asthma. These studies have led to a widespread belief of a causal link. However, according to the researchers at Karolinska Institutet, there is reason to question the results of these studies. To read more,click here

Brain Representations of Social Thoughts Accurately Predict Autism Diagnosis

Psychiatric disorders -- including autism -- are characterized and diagnosed based on a clinical assessment of verbal and physical behavior. However, brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience are poised to provide a powerful advanced new tool.Carnegie Mellon University researchers have created brain-reading techniques to use neural representations of social thoughts to predict autism diagnoses with 97 percent accuracy. This establishes the first biologically based diagnostic tool that measures a person's thoughts to detect the disorder that affects many children and adults worldwide. To read more,click here

Hookah Use May Make Cigarette Habit More Likely in Teens

Exotic hookah water pipes are all the rage among teens and young adults, but a new study suggests they could be a "gateway" device to cigarette smoking. The study found a similar effect for young people who use snus -- a type of moist chewing tobacco that is popular in Sweden. "Yet, water pipe tobacco remains largely unregulated by the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], and snus is less regulated than other smokeless tobacco," a team led by Samir Soneji, of Dartmouth College School of Medicine in Lebanon, N.H., wrote in the Dec. 8 online edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics. To read more,click here

Heavier Newborns Show Academic Edge in School

Birth weight makes a difference to a child's future academic performance, according to new Northwestern University research that found heavier newborns do better in elementary and middle school than infants with lower birth weights.Led by a multidisciplinary team of Northwestern researchers, the study raises an intriguing question: Does a fetus benefit from a longer stay in the mother's womb? "A child who is born healthy doesn't necessarily have a fully formed brain," said David Figlio, one of the study's authors and director of Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research (IPR). To read more,click here

Half Of Medicaid Providers Unavailable, Report Finds

A significant number of doctors purportedly accepting Medicaid are not actually offering treatment to the program's beneficiaries, a new investigation finds. More than half of primary care providers and specialists polled were not able to offer appointments to patients on Medicaid, according to a report released Tuesday from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General. The reasons that physicians were unavailable to Medicaid beneficiaries - which include many people with disabilities - varied, but in 35 percent of cases investigators found that doctors were not at the locations listed by the program's provider directory. To read more,click here

NASET Members Only

Evidence for 'Bilingual Advantage' May Be Less Conclusive than Previously Thought

Study results that challenge the idea that bilingual speakers have a cognitive advantage are less likely to be published than those that support the bilingual-advantage theory, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. This research suggests that a publication bias in favor of positive results may skew the overall literature on bilingualism and cognitive function."Publishing only 'successful' studies means that we do not have access to many valuable studies that could increase our understanding of the actual effects of bilingualism," says lead researcher Angela de Bruin of Edinburgh University. "The 'bilingual advantage' has received much attention and is now often considered to be common wisdom. Especially because of its societal relevance, it is important to realize that our interpretation of these advantages may be biased by the type of studies published." To read more,click here

3-D Printed Heart Could Reduce Heart Surgeries in Children

New 3D printed heart technology could reduce the number of heart surgeries in children with congenital heart disease, according to Dr Peter Verschueren who spoke on the topic at EuroEcho-Imaging 2014. Dr Verschueren brought 3D printed models of the heart to his lecture including models used to plan real cases in patients.EuroEcho-Imaging is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI), a branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is held 3-6 December in Vienna, Austria. Dr Verschueren said: "Children with congenital heart disease often need up to four open heart surgeries at different times of life. The 3D printed copy of the heart could reduce this to one or two because doctors can choose and practice the best interventional approach and device beforehand. This will avoid children spending months in intensive care." To read more,click here

Revolutionary New Procedure for Epilepsy Diagnosis Unlocked by Research

Pioneering new research could revolutionize global diagnostic procedures for one of the most common forms of epilepsy, scientists say. The ground-breaking research has revealed differences in the way that distant regions of the brain connect with each other and how these differences may lead to the generation of seizures in people with idiopathic generalized epilepsies (IGE).To read more,click here

Honor Society for Special Education Teachers

Designer Focuses On Interiors For Those With Autism

A.J. Paron-Wildes' home, a walk-out rambler in suburban Oak Park Heights, Minn., is a study in calm - all clean, uncluttered spaces and earthy, neutral hues that echo the autumn leaves framing the view of the St. Croix River. On an autumn afternoon, daughter Eva, 6, is having an after-school snack, while son Devin, 19, sketches intently, seated at the studio desk in his orderly bedroom. This peaceful environment is entirely by design. When you have a child child with autism, calm is a precious commodity - and Paron-Wildes has become an expert at creating it, starting in her own home. That journey started 16 years ago when Devin was diagnosed with autism at age 3. "It was very traumatic," Paron-Wildes recalled. To read more,click here

Prenatal Exposure to Common Chemicals Linked to Lower IQs in Study

Children exposed in the womb to higher amounts of two chemicals commonly found in plastics may be at higher risk for lower IQ, a new study suggests. The two compounds, di-n-butyl phthalate (DnBP) and di-isobutyl phthalate (DiBP), are part of a class of chemicals called phthalates and are found in a variety of household goods. "This study adds to the small but growing body of research linking children's prenatal exposure to phthalates and later development," said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York, who was not involved with the study. "This is the first prospective study to identify an association between prenatal phthalate exposure and IQ in school-age children." To read more,click here