Pediatric Care for Immigrant, Refugee, and Internationally Adopted Children.

Immigrant children are a diverse group and include refugees, asylees, and internationally adopted children. They have various infectious disease risk factors, depending on conditions within their country of origin, journey, and current living conditions. Infectious disease screening should take place within the framework of a comprehensive medical evaluation in the medical home. Some screening is recommended for all immigrant children including hepatitis B, syphilis, HIV, tuberculosis, and intestinal parasites; other diseases can be tested for based on individual risks. Although guidelines and resources are available, there is limited evidence supporting much of the care of immigrant children and youth.

Quantification of nutritive sucking among preterm and full-term infants.

PURPOSE: We developed summaries of oral bottle-feeding skills among preterm (<37 gestational weeks) and full-term (≥37 gestational weeks) infants using a mechanical device (Orometer) to measure intraoral pressure changes, with accompanying automated software and analytics. We then compared the rates of change in feeding skills over several weeks (feeding trends) between preterm and full-term infants. We also compared group means at 40 weeks post menstrual age (PMA). PATIENTS AND METHODS: Healthy full-term and preterm infants capable of oral feeding were recruited from the Pediatric Outpatient Clinic at University of California San Francisco, Fresno, and from the Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Neonatal Critical Care Unit, respectively. Feeding skill was quantified using an Orometer and automated suck-analysis software. Factor analysis reduced the >40 metrics produced by the Orometer system to the following seven factors that accounted for >99% of the sample covariance: suck vigor, endurance, resting, irregularity, frequency, variability, and bursting. We proposed that these factors represent feeding skills and they served as the dependent variables in linear models estimating trends in feeding skills over time for full-term and preterm infants (maturation). At approximately 40 weeks PMA we compared mean feedings skills between infants born preterm and those born full-term using predictions from our models. RESULTS: Feeding skills for 117 full-term infants and 82 preterm infants were first captured at mean PMA of 42.3 and 36.0 weeks, respectively. For some feeding skills, preterm and full-term infants showed different trends over time. At 37-40 weeks PMA, preterm infants took approximately 15% fewer sucks than infants born full-term (p=0.06) and generally had weaker suck vigor, greater resting, and less endurance than full-term babies. Preterm infant-feeding skills appeared similar to those of full-term infants upon reaching ≥40 weeks PMA, although preterm infants showed greater variability for all factors. CONCLUSION: The Orometer device, accompanying software, and analytic methods provided a framework for describing trends in oral feeding, thereby allowing us to characterize differences in maturation of feeding between healthy preterm and full-term infants.

Detection of a de novo interstitial 2q microdeletion by CGH microarray analysis in a patient with limb malformations, microcephaly and mental retardation.

We describe the cytogenetic diagnosis using BAC- and oligonucleotide microarrays of a 16-year-old Laotian-American female, who first presented at 2 1/2 years of age with microcephaly, developmental retardation, and skeletal abnormalities of the upper limb including mild syndactyly of the second and third and the third and fourth fingers, short middle phalanges and clinodactyly of the fifth digit at the distal interphalangel joint on both hands, and symphalangism of the metacarpal-phalangeal joints of the second and fifth digits bilaterally. Her lower limbs displayed symphalangism of the metatarsal-phalangeal joint of the second, third, and fourth digits on both feet, with fusion of the middle and distal phalanges of the second and fifth digits and hallux valgus bilaterally. G-banded chromosomal study at age 4 was normal. However, comparative genomic hybridization at age 15 with the Spectral Genomics 1 Mb Hu BAC array platform indicated a microdeletion involving two BAC clones, RP11-451F14 --> RP11-12N7 at 2q31.1. The maximal deletion on initial analysis comprised the HOXD cluster, which is implicated in limb development. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) using the RP11-451F14 probe confirmed the deletion. Both parents were negative for the deletion. Additional FISH using BAC RP11-387A1, covering the HOXD cluster, limited the maximal deletion to approximately 2.518 Mb, and excluded involvement of the HOXD cluster. The Agilent 44K and 244K platforms demonstrated a deletion of approximately 2,011,000 bp, which did not include the HOXD cluster. The malformations in our patient may be caused by deletion of a regulatory element far upstream of the HOXD cluster.