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Query: UMLS:C0004352 (autism)
 32,579 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

We report the case of a boy whose development was normal until the age of three when regression with loss of speech occurred. Other anomalies included eating and sleep disorders, sterotyped behavior disorders, suggesting infantile psychosis. The electroencephalogram evidenced paroxysmal anomalies, particularly during sleep, with no clinical seizures. The diagnosis of epilepsia-acquired aphasia syndrome (Landau-Kleffner syndrome) was made. The psychotic disorders were not considered as a differential diagnosis but rather as intertwined with the elements of the syndrome. The relationship between acquired aphasia and psychosis are discussed.
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PMID:[Epilepsy-acquired aphasia syndrome with psychosis. Report of a case ]. 169 43

A review is presented of the diagnosis and drug treatment of the more common psychiatric and developmental disorders in the pediatric population. Where applicable, DSM III (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, III) criteria are utilized to describe the behavioral syndromes. The indications for usage and appropriate dosages of antipsychotics, antidepressants, anxiolytics, stimulants, and lithium are described. Those disorders discussed are attention deficit disorder, conduct disorders, anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, schizophrenia, autism, Tourette's syndrome, mental retardation, depressive illness, manic depressive illness, eating disorders, and enuresis.
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PMID:Pharmacologic treatment of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders in children and adolescents (Part 1). 241 73

Diet clearly influences neurotransmission. This can be important in grossly undernourished children. It can also be important in children in whom normal homeostatic mechanisms governing food intake are bypassed. Subtle differences in behavior can occur with physiologic variation in food intake. Components of foods can also be used as drugs. Starvation can impair neuronal maturation and can have lasting effects upon behavior and intellectual performance. The extent of starvation's impact upon the brain depends upon whether undernutrition occurred during a critical phase in brain development. Short-term fasting has small, but significant, effects upon intellectual performance. Even when gross malnutrition is not present, subtle changes in diet may modulate brain function. Tryptophan, tyrosine, and choline in the diet are used as precursors for neuronal synthesis of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, and acetylcholine, respectively. It is likely that the brain's sensitivity to certain components of the diet exists to permit monitoring of food intake by the central nervous system. Tryptophan, tyrosine, and choline may be useful in treatment of humans with sleep disorders, pain depression, mania, hypertension, shock, or dyskinesias. Other components of the diet that may affect behavior include food additives, sugar, and caffeine. Food additives may exacerbate hyperactive symptoms in a small proportion of children with attention deficit disorder. Given that there is little potential for harm and that there is a subpopulation that may respond, a trial of a diet that contains no food additives may be a valid diagnostic approach for children with attention deficit disorder who do not respond to stimulant therapy or for children for whom stimulant therapy is not desired. Refined sugar has been blamed for many behavioral abnormalities. Subtle effects of carbohydrate upon behavior have been reported, but the existing data do not support the hypothesis that sucrose or fructose exert special effects upon neurotransmission. Caffeine is easily detected as a stimulant by humans, but it has little effect upon cognitive function. Administration of large doses of vitamins has no beneficial effect in most humans with schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, autism, Down's syndrome, or drug addiction. Large doses of niacinamide may even be harmful, as they may cause hepatic damage.
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PMID:Dietary influences on neurotransmission. 302 51

Headbanging is a rhythmic movement disorder (RMD) along with headrolling, bodyrocking and bodyrolling. The International Classification of Sleep Disorders defines RMD as a group of stereotyped, repetitive movements involving large muscles, usually of the head and neck, that typically occur immediately prior to sleep onset and are sustained into light sleep. The average onset is 9 months, and by 10 years of age the majority of subjects no longer complain of headbanging. If it continues, it is usually associated with mental retardation of autism. Headbanging is said to occur during presleep drowsiness or early non-rapid eye movement sleep. Often there is no need for treatment other than reassurance. Behavior modification has had little success. Benzodiazepines (such as oxazepam and diazepam) and tricyclic antidepressants have been used with variable success. We present two cases of headbanging with polysomnographic findings and treatment. The patients are two healthy adult males. They both experienced significant daytime somnolence and repeatedly wakened their partners. Only one of our patients had recorded head movements during his overnight sleep study. There was evidence of headbanging during stage 1 and stage 2 sleep but also during slow wave sleep. Headbanging was recorded during 14% of the epochs. Both patients responded to treatment with clonazepam (at a dose of 1.0 mg nightly) with decreased frequency and severity of headbanging. Although headbanging is most common in childhood, there may be significant number of cases that persist into adulthood. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the treatment of headbanging with clonazepam. Both patients benefited from this treatment.
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PMID:Adult headbanging: sleep studies and treatment. 940 33

A group of Vancouver health professionals, including the authors, have studied the use of oral melatonin in the treatment of chronic sleep disorders in children with disabilities since the Fall of 1991. This review article is based on the first 100 patients, half of whom were visually impaired or blind. Children with neurological, neuropsychiatric, and developmental disabilities are predisposed to chronic sleep-wake cycle disturbances. Disorders such as blindness, deaf-blindness, mental retardation, autism, and central nervous system diseases, among others, diminish the ability of these individuals to perceive and interpret the multitude of cues for synchronizing their sleep with the environment. Melatonin, which benefitted slightly over 80% of our patients, appears to be a safe, inexpensive, and a very effective treatment of sleep-wake cycle disorders. The oral dose of fast release melatonin taken at bed-time ranged from 2.5 mg to 10 mg. Side effects or the development of tolerance have not been observed. Since the causes of sleep difficulties are extremely variable, not all children are candidates for treatment. For successful melatonin treatment, clinical experience is required, and the influences of other health problems and medications need to be considered. Further clinical and laboratory research in this field is imperative because melatonin treatment offers enormous health, emotional, social, and economic benefits to society, especially since multidisabled children with chronic sleep difficulties do not respond well to current therapeutic regimes.
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PMID:Use of melatonin in the treatment of paediatric sleep disorders. 898 17

Eighty-eight children with autism, living in a suburb of Tokyo, were examined by questionnaire from 21 July to 31 August. Experienced sleep disorders were observed in 56 children; 44 of whom had sleep disorders before 3 years old. The average age when sleep disorders were seen to have stopped was 5 years old. The most common problem was difficulty falling sleep (n=23), followed by frequent awakening during sleep time (n=19), then early morning awakening (n=11). Bed-wetting was observed in 22 children.
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PMID:Sleep disorder in children with autism. 962 39

We studied the usefulness of melatonin for sleep disorders and emotional/behavior disturbances of patients with developmental disorders. The efficacy and side effects of melatonin at bedtime were evaluated in 50 children and young adults with sleep disorders (3-28 years old, 41 males and 9 females, autism [AU] in 27 patients, mentally retardation [MR] in 20 patients, and severe motor and intellectual disability [SMID] in 3 patients). The sleep disorders consisted of various types of insomnia in 44 patients and of circadian rhythm sleep disorders in 6 patients. Thirty nine of the insomnia patients and 3 of the circadian rhythm sleep disorder patients experienced improvement in response to melatonin. In some cases, the efficacies were diminished after the daily medication of melatonin. With the emotional/behavior disturbances, excitabilities were often improved in cases whose sleep disorders were also improved. There was almost no change in contrariness, stereotyped behavior and in school/workshop refusal. Melatonin at bedtime was efficacious in 42 of the 50 patients with sleep disorders. In 17 patients, there were side effects (residual drowsiness on the next morning, awakening in the middle of sleep, excitement after awakening and before going to sleep, etc.). But these side effects were not serious. The effects of melatonin were influenced by the type of sleep disturbances, the factors of the environment and the mental conditions. Taking side effects into account, we judged melatonin to be useful in 34 patients.
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PMID:[Usefulness of melatonin for developmental sleep and emotional/behavior disorders--studies of melatonin trial on 50 patients with developmental disorders]. 1048 68

This research evaluated parent reports of sleep behaviors of four groups of children: those with Autism or Pervasive Developmental Disorders, those with General Mental Retardation alone, those attending Special Education classes (with no MR diagnosis), and a control group of similar aged children without a developmental diagnosis. Diagnostic classification and demographic information were determined through parent report, report of classroom registration, and the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale (Gilliam, 1995). To evaluate sleeping behavior the study used a 28-item, five-factor scale (Behavioral Evaluation of Disorders of Sleep/BEDS; Schreck, 1997/1998) constructed from the diagnostic criteria for childhood sleep disorders found in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders: Diagnostic and Coding Manual (ICSD, American Sleep Disorders Association, 1990). Findings suggest that reports of parents with children with autistic characteristics exhibit expected quantities of sleep, but parent perception of their sleep difficulties and sleep quality is different for children with autism than for children in all other study groups.
J Autism Dev Disord 2000 Apr
PMID:Parental report of sleep problems in children with autism. 1083 77

Aniracetam is a pyrrolidinone-type cognition enhancer that has been clinically used in the treatment of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia following stroke and in Alzheimer's disease. New discoveries in the behavioral pharmacology, biochemistry and pharmacokinetics of aniracetam provided new indications for this drug in the treatment of various CNS disorders or disease states. This article reviews these new findings and describes the effects of aniracetam in various rodent models of mental function impairment or cerebral dysfunction. Also, several metabolites of aniracetam have been reported to affect learning and memory in animals. It is, therefore, conceivable that major metabolites of aniracetam contribute to its pharmacological effects. The animal models, used in pharmacological evaluation of aniracetam included models of hypoattention, hypovigilance-arousal, impulsiveness, hyperactivity, fear and anxiety, depression, impaired rapid-eye movement sleep, disturbed temporal regulation, behavioral performance, and bladder hyperactivity. These are models of clinical disorders or symptoms that may include personality disorders, anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, negative symptoms of schizophrenia, and sleep disorders. At present, there is no convincing evidence that promising effects of aniracetam in the animal models will guarantee its clinical efficacy. It is conceivable, however, that clinical trials will demonstrate beneficial effects of aniracetam in the above listed disease states. New findings regarding the mechanism of action of aniracetam, its central target sites, and its effects on signal transduction are also discussed in this review article.
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PMID:Aniracetam: its novel therapeutic potential in cerebral dysfunctional disorders based on recent pharmacological discoveries. 1207 May 27

Data on sleep behavior were gathered on 100 children with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), ages 2-11 years, using sleep diaries, the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ), and the Parenting Events Questionnaire. Two time periods were sampled to assess short-term stability of sleep-wake patterns. Before data collection, slightly more than half of the parents, when queried, reported a sleep problem in their child. Subsequent diary and CSHQ reports confirmed more fragmented sleep in those children who were described by their parents as having a sleep problem compared to those without a designated problem. Interestingly, regardless of parental perception of problematic sleep, all children with PDD exhibited longer sleep onset times and greater fragmentation of sleep than that reported for age-matched community norms. The results demonstrate that sleep problems identified by the parent, as well as fragmentation of sleep patterns obtained from sleep diary and CSHQ data, exist in a significant proportion of children with PDD.
J Autism Dev Disord 2002 Dec
PMID:Sleep patterns of children with pervasive developmental disorders. 1509 63


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