Most research on learning disabilities focuses on remediating specific academic skills like reading and math. But struggles at school and with homework can create an enormous amount of stress and anxiety for children and families, finds a study published June 4 in the Journal of Learning Disabilities. "At least half the time when I give feedback from an evaluation, a parent becomes teary," says neuropsychologist and study leader Deborah Waber, PhD, who directs the Learning Disabilities Program at Boston Children's Hospital. "The effect on families is not trivial, and it's been under-appreciated. It's always good to ask families about stress and anxiety if they report concerns about academics." Read More

A small-molecule drug is the first to preserve hearing in a mouse model of an inherited form of progressive human deafness, report investigators at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). The study, which appears online in Cell, sheds light on the molecular mechanism that underlies a form of deafness (DFNA27), and suggests a new treatment strategy. "We were able to partially restore hearing, especially at lower frequencies, and save some sensory hair cells," said Thomas B. Friedman, Ph.D., chief of the Laboratory of Human Molecular Genetics at the NIDCD, and a coauthor of the study. "If additional studies show that small-molecule-based drugs are effective in treating DFNA27 deafness in people, it's possible that using similar approaches might work for other inherited forms of progressive hearing loss." Read More

For the majority of affected youth, anxiety disorders are chronic, even after a successful course of evidence-based treatments, reports a study published in the July 2018 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP). Pediatric anxiety disorders are common psychiatric illnesses, affecting approximately 10 percent of children. In one of the largest comparative treatment studies, researchers found that 12 weeks of sertraline and/or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) were effective in reducing anxiety and improving functioning. In the newly released follow-up study, researchers re-contacted these youths an average of six years later and then re-assessed them annually for up to four additional years. Researchers found that 22 percent of youth who received 12 weeks of treatment for an anxiety disorder stayed in remission over the long term, meaning they did not meet diagnostic criteria for any anxiety disorder (defined as any DSM-IV TR anxiety disorder, including post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder). Read More

A dietary supplement derived from glucose increases muscle-force production in the Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) mouse model by 50% in ten days, according to a study conducted by researchers from Université Laval's Faculty of Medicine and Centre hospitalier universitaire (CHU) de Québec Research Centre-Université Laval. The results, which were recently published in the scientific periodical The FASEB Journal, pave the way for a clinical study to test the treatment's effectiveness on humans. DMD is a hereditary disease characterized by progressive muscle degeneration. The disease puts affected people in a wheelchair by their teens. It also affects the heart and respiratory muscles, reducing the life expectancy of patients to less than 40 years. DMD affects roughly 1 out of 3,500 boys, making it the most common form of muscular dystrophy. There is no known cure for the disease. A steroid-based treatment can slow down muscle degeneration, but it causes serious side effects. Read More