Due to increases in the number of children with special needs and the demands on nursery school teachers in Japan, the problem of staff burnout has been observed. In this study, we developed the ...Stressor Scale in Inclusive Education (SSIE) with nursery school teachers of children with special needs and clarified the relationship with childcare experiences of children with special needs. The results showed that nursery school teachers currently in charge of children with special needs or who had overseen children with special needs were significantly more likely to report experiencing stressors in the SSIE subscale “Human relations with parents and other children in the class” than those who had not overseen children with special needs. In addition, the Japanese version of the Rathus assertiveness schedule (J-RAS), developed by Rathus, was used to examine the relationship between assertiveness and stress in nursery school teachers and revealed a negative relationship between the SSIE subscale “Insufficient self-expertise” and J-RAS scores. Therefore, to reduce the stressors among nursery school teachers, nursery school teachers should have a sense of their expertise.
Children with Down syndrome (DS) have physical characteristics such as hypotonus of the musculature. Therefore, their attainment rate of physical activity guidelines is low, and guidelines alone may ...not be sufficient in assessing the amount of physical activity in children with DS. Compared with normal children (NC) of the same grade, light physical activity (LPA) must be considered while assessing physical activity of children with DS, owing to muscle hypotonia. This study included 69 children with DS and 68 NC in grades 4−6 attending elementary school in Japan. The measurements for physical characteristics included age, height, weight, and body mass index. Physical activity was measured using a triaxial accelerometer, which indicated physical activity volume. Children with DS had less moderate-to-vigorous physical activity duration (DS: 53.1 min/day, NC: 65.0 min/day; p < 0.001) but significantly longer LPA duration (DS: 376.4 min/day, NC: 287.7 min/day; p < 0.001) than NC. Conversely, the amount of light to vigorous physical activity (Met’s-hours/day) was greater in children with DS (DS: 16.0 Met’s-hours/day, NC: 14.4 Met’s-hours/day; p = 0.037). In children with DS with muscular hypotonia, vigorous physical activity is challenging, but LPA is feasible. Developing and validating educational programs that promote physical activity with intensity level depending on individual’s physical characteristic are warranted.
The main anticancer action of doxorubicin (DOX) is believed to be due to topoisomerase II inhibition and free radical generation. Our previous study has demonstrated that TAS-103, a topoisomerase ...inhibitor, induces apoptosis through DNA cleavage and subsequent H
2O
2 generation mediated by NAD(P)H oxidase activation H. Mizutani et al. J. Biol. Chem. 277 (2002) 30684-30689. Therefore, to clarify whether DOX functions as an anticancer drug through the same mechanism or not, we investigated the mechanism of apoptosis induced by DOX in the human leukemia cell line HL-60 and the H
2O
2-resistant sub-clone, HP100. DOX-induced DNA ladder formation could be detected in HL-60 cells after a 7 h incubation, whereas it could not be detected under the same condition in HP100 cells, suggesting the involvement of H
2O
2-mediated pathways in apoptosis. Flow cytometry revealed that H
2O
2 formation preceded the increase in ΔΨm and caspase-3 activation. Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) and NAD(P)H oxidase inhibitors prevented DOX-induced DNA ladder formation in HL-60 cells. Moreover, DOX significantly induced formation of 8-oxo-7,8-dihydro-2′-deoxyguanosine, an indicator of oxidative DNA damage, in HL-60 cells at 1 h, but not in HP100 cells. DOX-induced apoptosis was mainly initiated by oxidative DNA damage in comparison with the ability of other topoisomerase inhibitors (TAS-103, amrubicin and amrubicinol) to cause DNA cleavage and apoptosis. These results suggest that the critical apoptotic trigger of DOX is considered to be oxidative DNA damage by the DOX-induced direct H
2O
2 generation, although DOX-induced apoptosis may involve topoisomerase II inhibition. This oxidative DNA damage causes indirect H
2O
2 generation through PARP and NAD(P)H oxidase activation, leading to the ΔΨm increase and subsequent caspase-3 activation in DOX-induced apoptosis.
Previous studies (N=41) on the self-esteem of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were reviewed, and future issues were investigated. The results of past studies examining the self-esteem ...level of ASD and typically developing individuals have been inconsistent. Individual differences in the self-esteem level of ASD individuals might be larger than those of typically developing individuals. Moreover, studies on the support for improving the self-esteem of ASD individuals have indicated that although various types of support have been provided, effective support methods have not been developed to date. For the clarification of the self-esteem of ASD individuals, the accumulation of studies on self-esteem from the perspectives of its “stability and level,” as well as its “contingency,” is required in the future. Furthermore, support for ASD children is crucial to prevent the decline in their self-esteem that starts from the upper grades of elementary school.
Background and aims
Previous studies suggest that syntactic development in children with intellectual disabilities (ID) is positively correlated with verbal short-term memory (VSTM). This study ...investigated the characteristics of syntactic development and their relationships of VSTM in children with ID based on type.
Methods
The participants were children with ID (N = 34), including 14 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), 20 with Down syndrome (DS), with chronological ages from 8 years 10 months to 18 years 4 months and nonverbal mental ages (MA) of over 4 years, and typically developing (TD) children (N = 21) with chronological ages from 5 years 0 months to 5 years 10 months. They were assessed using VSTM, syntactic comprehension, and expression tasks.
Results
The results showed that both the ASD and DS groups performed significantly lower on the syntactic comprehension task and the syntactic expression task than the TD group with the same nonverbal MA in the complex aspect of grammatical structure. In the VSTM task, the ASD group showed significantly lower performance in sentence and story repetition tasks than the TD group of the same nonverbal MA. The DS group showed significantly lower performance in forward digit span, and word, nonword, sentence, and story repetition tasks than the TD group of the same nonverbal MA.
Conclusions
These results suggest that children with ASD have difficulty in understanding and remembering linguistic information with complex semantic structures, and children with DS have a small capacity for VSTM, affecting their syntactic development.
In Japan, numerous special needs school teachers take sick leave because of mental illness. This study aims to develop a stressor scale for special needs school teachers working during COVID-19 ...pandemic and to clarify the actual conditions and relationships among stressors, stress responses, and resilience of such teachers in schools for people with intellectual disability. The questionnaire was completed by 227 special needs teachers. Six factors emerged from factor analysis: difficulty in dealing with guardians, disconnection between schools and national and local educational policies, relationship troubles among coworkers, busyness, lack of specialty, and trouble in dealing with COVID-19. The scale’s criterion-related validity and internal consistency were verified. The results revealed virtually no relationship between trouble in dealing with COVID-19 and stress responses. However, the higher the degree of relationship troubles among coworkers and busyness, the higher their stress responses. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the resilience subfactors were negatively related to stress responses.
and Rationale: Obesity is a health challenge for adults with Down syndrome. Therefore, a physical activity promotion program is required to prevent or reduce obesity in adults with this condition. ...However, there is a lack of evidence of useful risk reduction initiatives. The objective of this study was to suggest a rationale for behaviors that should replace time of inactivity to reduce obesity in Japanese adults with Down syndrome.
The participants were adults with Down syndrome, aged 18–48 years, living in Japan. The snowball sampling method was used. To detect an effect size of 0.20 for body mass index using an F-test, 80 participants were required, generating a statistical power of 0.8 and a risk level of 0.05. Survey items included sex, age, height, weight, body mass index, and physical activity (min/d). Physical activity was categorized by intensity and further divided into ambulatory and non-ambulatory activities. The body mass index categories were compared using analysis of covariance. An isotemporal substitution model was used to confirm the interdependence of behaviors.
Half of the participants were obese, with a body mass index of 25 kg/m2 or higher. The obese group had significantly fewer light physical activity, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, and ambulatory moderate-to-vigorous physical activity times than the non-obese group. Replacing 10 min of sedentary behavior with ambulatory moderate-to-vigorous physical activity was significantly associated with a lower body mass index.
This study suggests a rationale for behaviors that should replace time of inactivity to reduce obesity in adults with Down syndrome. Specifically, replacing 10 min of sedentary behavior with ambulatory moderate-to-vigorous physical activity time may contribute to obesity reduction.
Busulfan (1,4‐butanediol dimethanesulfonate) has been used widely for the treatment of patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia. Busulfan is bifunctional and thus may effectively induce DNA damage, ...which may play an important role in the cytotoxicity. In this study, we compared the cytotoxicity of bifunctional busulfan with that of monofunctional ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) in human promyelocytic leukemia HL‐60 cells. Busulfan showed a significant inhibitory effect on cell growth, whereas the cells grew in the presence of EMS. To clarify the mechanism of cytotoxicity of busulfan, we investigated DNA damage induced by busulfan using 32P‐5′‐end‐labeled DNA fragments obtained from the human p16 tumor suppressor gene. Busulfan induced DNA damage dose‐dependently, whereas EMS caused little DNA damage. DNA‐sequencing experiments using piperidine and 3‐methyladenine DNA glycosylase indicated that busulfan caused double‐base lesions mainly at 5′‐GA‐3′and, to a lesser extent, at 5′‐GG‐3’sequences. Time of flight mass spectrometry confirmed that busulfan forms an intrastrand cross‐link at the 5′‐GA‐3’sequence, in addition to mono‐alkylation. The mechanism and the role of cross‐linking at the 5′‐GA‐3’sequence are discussed in relation to the cytotoxicity induced by busulfan.
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to clarify the impact of adults with Down syndrome (DS) on COVID-19 and the status of efforts for new normal in Japan through a Web survey.
...Design/methodology/approach
Parents’ associations’ representatives sent requests to members aged 18 years or older inviting them to participate in an Internet survey. A total of 141 people cooperated, and 126 people were included in the analysis.
Findings
As a result of examining the number of times the state of emergency was declared and its impact on COVID-19, the degree of anxiety felt when hearing information about new coronavirus infections on television or the internet was significantly higher in subjects for whom the state of emergency was declared four times than in subjects for whom the state of emergency was declared two and three times in the region. This was significantly higher than that of the subjects in the areas where the state of emergency had been declared four times and significantly lower than that of the subjects in the areas where the state of emergency had been declared one time for “smiling”. The results suggest that the effects on physical and mental health, although limited, are influenced by the number of times the state of emergency was declared. From the analysis of the free text, it was inferred that some, but not all, of the subjects with DS, had their physical and mental state affected by COVID-19 to the extent that they required medical care.
Originality/value
This study clarified the psychosomatic effects of COVID-19 in people with DS in adulthood, which has not yet been fully clarified in the world. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in Japan to clarify the physical and mental effects of COVID-19 on people with DS and the status of new normal initiatives.
Efficacy of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of vancomycin (VCM) was retrospectively investigated in 184 patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. The incidence of ...nephrotoxicity was compared between the patients who received TDM practice (TDM group, n=73) and did not (non-TDM group, n=111). Creatinine clearance (CLcr) values decreased significantly after the VCM therapy in the non-TDM group (p<0.05). The patients with MRSA bacteremia or pneumonia were classified into two groups according to peak concentrations of VCM: above 25 μg/ml (Group A: n=29) and below (Group B: n=24). Mean duration of VCM therapy (14.1 d) in Group A was significantly shorter than that (27.0 d) in Group B. Mean cumulative total VCM doses (13.3 g) in Group A was significantly less than that (25.0 g) in Group B. These results indicate that monitoring peak concentration is essential to obtain better clinical effects for VCM therapy, and that the peak concentration above 25 μg/ml is more effective.
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