Brain Structural Correlates of INTELLIGENCE in ADHD Individuals

Neuroimaging evidences have shown the association of intelligence with several structural brain properties in normal individuals. However, this association for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is need to be investigated. we estimated grey matter density of the brain using MRI scanning on 56 ADHD individuals comprising 30 combined (age=10.44±2.41, IQ=112.13±13.15, male, 24 right hand) and 26 inattentive (age=11.39±2.1, IQ=107.44±13.98, male, 28 right hand) as well as 30 IQ matched healthy control (age=11.08±2.15, IQ=115±13.56,male, 23 right hand). In this study, two statistical approaches were used. At the first approach, region based as well as whole pattern of association between full scale IQ and grey matter were computed and compared between groups. The second approach was to look at the differential pattern of grey matter density whithout considering IQ in three groups. Results showed significant differences between ADHD group and control. This finding could suggest that intelligence is not purely grounded on the density of grey matter in certain brain regions; it is a dynamic phenomenon and drastically changes in the neurodevelopmental disorders.

An epidemiology-based model as a tool to monitor the outbreak of inappropriateness in tumor marker requests: a national scale study

Evaluation of appropriateness of laboratory tests on the basis of individual requests remains a serious problem as the clinical question is usually not reported with the test order. This study explored the comparison of the rate of tumor marker orders with cancer prevalence as a putative indicator of inappropriateness.Tumor marker orders (2011 and 2012) were obtained from the Ministry of Health and cancer prevalence from the Italian Association of Cancer Registries. The rate of tumor marker orders was matched with demographic data and tumor prevalence and examined by using the confidence interval approach. Region-to-region and year-to-year variations were also examined. Focus was placed on CEA, CA125, CA19.9 and CA15.3.Tumor markers ordered in Italy were 13,207,289 in 2012 (221.3/1000 individuals). Given an estimated prevalence of 2,243,953 cancer cases, 7.04 tumor markers appear to be requested for each prevalent case of epithelial cancer per year. The rate of requests of CEA, CA125, CA19.9 and CA15.3 (in aggregate 5,834,167 requests in 2012, 44.2% of total) from the first and the last ranked region (96 and 244/1000 individuals) are significantly different (p<0.01). Region-to-region differences do not correspond to any known variation of prevalence in the different regions.The developed approach provides a proxy indicator of inappropriateness showing that tumor markers are overused in Italy and their ordering pattern is not related to tumor prevalence. The model is suitable to be validated in other laboratory tests used in diseases whose prevalence is known.

Boundary Behavior of Solutions of the Helmholtz Equation

This paper is concerned with the boundary behavior of solutions of the Helmholtz equation in ℝn. In particular, we give a Littlewood-type theorem to show that the approach region introduced by Korányi and Taylor (1983) is best possible.

Approach regions for the square root of the Poisson kernel and bounded functions

If the Poisson kernel of the unit disc is replaced by its square root, it is known that normalised Poisson integrals of Lp boundary functions converge almost everywhere at the boundary, along approach regions wider than the ordinary non-tangential cones. The sharp approach region, defined by means of a monotone function, increases with p. We make this picture complete by determining along which approach regions one has almost everywhere convergence for L∞ boundary functions.