Helping families of homicide victims: A multidimensional approach

Homicide inflicts massive injury upon the intrapsychic and interpersonal realities of the surviving kin of murder victims. A New York City pilot program of outreach and counselling to 1182 families of Brooklyn homicide victims suggests that surviving kin undergo the symptoms of traumatic stress disorder. Recovery is prolonged by knowledge that the perpetrator is usually alive and in some cases unpunished, by repetitive confrontations with the criminal justice system and by the multiple losses endured: loss of a family member, loss of illusions of safety and invulnerability, loss of a sense of trust in the surrounding community, and loss of a belief system. Effective help to survivors requires interventions that respond to all aspects of the survivors' losses.     

Memory encoding and retrieval in the aging brain.

Decline in episodic memory, the encoding and retrieval of autobiographical events, is a hallmark of normal cognitive aging. Although the primary causes of this decline remain elusive, event-related brain potential (ERP) studies have contributed to an understanding of age-related episodic memory failure. These data reveal that, although the retrieval-based episodic memory (EM) effect does not differ dramatically between young and older adults, the acquisition-related data suggest a decline in episodic encoding (i.e., semantic elaboration) with increasing age. We conclude that, at the current state of knowledge, encoding deficiencies are more important than retrieval deficits in understanding the causes of episodic memory decline in the older adult.     

Risk factors for wheezing in Ukrainian children: Ukraine European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood Group

The prevalence of wheezing in children varies widely around the world. The reasons for this geographic variability remain unclear but may be related in part to exposures in the home environment during pregnancy and early childhood. We investigated the prenatal and early childhood risk factors for wheezing symptoms among 2127 children aged 6–8 years who were participants in the Ukrainian component of the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood (ELSPAC). Cases included the 169 children whose parents answered yes to the International Study of Asthma and Allergy in Children (ISAAC) question: 'Has your child had wheezing or whistling in the chest in the past 12 months' during the ELSPAC assessment of the children at age 7. These were compared with the 1861 children in the cohort whose parents answered 'no' to this question.
Factors significantly associated with increased risk of wheezing illness at age 7 in adjusted analyses included mother's asthma [adjusted odds ratio (OR) 3.46, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.22, 9.85]; mother's allergy problems (OR 1.43, [1.00, 2.05]); rarely playing with other children at age 3 (OR 1.84, [1.09, 3.11]); water intrusion (OR 1.62, [1.09, 2.39]) and inadequate heating of the home (OR 1.52, [1.06, 2.16]) during pregnancy. Factors protective of wheezing at age 7 included being first-born (adjusted OR 0.70, 95% CI 0.50, 0.98); living in the city of Dniprodzerzynsk as compared with Kyiv (OR 0.36, [0.24, 0.54]) and weekly contact with furry animals (OR 0.44, [0.20, 0.97]) before age 3. The constellation of risk factors for wheezing in Ukrainian children is similar to that of children in other parts of the world. Known risk factors do not account for the significant between-city variability of wheezing in Ukrainian children.     

Hypocarotenemia in patients fed enterally with commercial liquid diets

We have found that 12 patients requiring permanent enteral feeding secondary to cerebrovascular accident with adequate Vitamin A nutritional status had serum concentrations of various carotenoids which were only 8-17% of sex- and age-matched healthy controls. Their serum retinol levels were normal, but only 61% of their controls despite receiving two to three times the recommended daily allowance (RDA) in retinol equivalents. Commercial enteral formulas were found to contain only negligible quantities of the carotenoids and were the cause of the hypocarotenemia. To assess the ability of these patients to absorb beta-carotene, nine tube-fed patients were given 15 mg of beta-carotene (2.5 times the RDA) in a single dose. Serum concentration time curves showed that only four patients absorbed significant quantities of the beta-carotene and absorption was delayed compared to previously studied subjects taking enteral formulas as meals. These studies suggest that the efficiency of absorption of the fat soluble vitamins may be lower in tube-fed patients and that patients receiving long-term tube feeding are denied the possible protective effects of the carotenoids normally contained in the American diet.     

Results of revision total knee arthroplasty performed for aseptic loosening

One hundred thirty-seven revision total knee arthroplasties (TKA) performed in 117 patients with failed aseptic metal-to-plastic knees over ten years (1974-1984) were studied to determine the long-term clinical and roentgenographic results and were compared to primary TKA. The mean age was 65 years (range, 32-90 years). Fifty-three percent had rheumatoid arthritis, and 47% had osteoarthritis. The mean interval from initial to revision TKA (129 knees) was four years (range, three months to 11 years) and from the first to second revision (seven knees) was 2.4 years (range, seven months to 5.5 years). The most common reasons for failure were loosening (73%), patellar complications (13%), and instability (10%). The mean follow-up time was 5.2 years (range, two to 12 years). Function, instability, motion, and pain all improved after revision TKA, but these improvements were significantly less than those seen after primary TKA. One-third of the patients still ambulated with crutches, a walker, or not at all. While mean postoperative flexion was 100 degrees, 24% could not flex to 90 degrees. Most patients (90%) were malaligned at the time of failure and remained so after revision (78%). The increased incidence of radiolucent lines (tibial, 61%; femoral, 24%) was not related to increased failure. Complications were not increased over primary TKA. The failure rate was 5.8% at 5.2 years, or approximately 1% per year. A successful clinical result was defined as a knee with mild or no pain, mild or no instability, and flexion to at least 90 degrees.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

The chemotherapy of posterior Fossa tumors in childhood

Conventional therapy for brain tumors, consisting of neurosurgical intervention and radiotherapy, has not resulted in the successes achievable in other childhood malignancies. The role of adjuvant chemotherapy, well defined in many childhood cancers, has not yet contributed significantly to the treatment of children with brain tumors. Chemotherapy of recurrent tumors has produced regressions but no cures. The most active agents identified to date in the treatment of recurrent posterior fossa tumors include cisplatinum, cyclophosphamide and methotrexate. Future efforts will need to focus on the rational selection of drugs for study in limited agent histology-stratified phase II trials, with advancement of active agents into large randomized phase III adjuvant therapy trials.     

Sex differences in spatial ability in children

There is considerable evidence that sex differences in spatial ability exist in adults, with males outperforming females at every age after puberty. It is difficult, however, to find sex differences in children younger than 13. This is due in part to the lack of adequate measures of spatial ability for use with children. We report the use of spatial tests for children that are similar to those that have shown large sex differences in adults and may be measuring ability comparable to adult spatial ability. Four tests of mental rotation and spatial visualization were given to two samples of children. The first sample consisted of 81 children (39 males and 42 females) aged 9 to 12 years. The second sample consisted of 42 children (21 males and 21 females) aged 9 to 13 years. Sex differences of .4–.6 standard deviations were found on three tests in both samples. These results indicate that sex differences in spatial ability can be found in preadolescents if appropriate tests are used. Measurement of these abilities in children facilitates the investigation of possible biological and sociocultural contributors to the sex differences in spatial ability.This study was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant HD19644 and NIH Biomedical Research Support Grant S07 RR05366-24.