Factors influencing self-esteem and self-consciousness in adolescents with spina bifida.

PURPOSE: To identify the demographic, personal, familial, attitudinal, and social factors that influence the self-esteem of adolescents with spina bifida. METHODS: A structured face-to-face interview, that included the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory, was conducted with 107 adolescents with spina bifida. Discriminant analyses were performed to identify the factors that discriminate between adolescents with spina bifida who have low vs. high self-esteem and low vs. high self-consciousness. The discriminant functions included variables from the following domains: sociodemographics, personal biography, family interaction, peer relationships and activities, school and work experiences, attitudes toward spina bifida, sexuality and sexual education, and future aspirations. RESULTS: The factors contributing most positively to adolescents' self-esteem were age-appropriate treatments by parents and parental permissiveness in social participation, as perceived by the adolescents. Factors negatively associated with self-esteem included school problems, a perception of disability by others, and living in a medium-sized town (i.e., population 10,000-49,999). The discriminant models correctly identified 57.8% of adolescents who had low self-esteem and 50.4% of those with high self-consciousness, and accurately classified 92.6% and 88.4% of those who had high self-esteem and low self-consciousness, respectively. CONCLUSION: Parents' relationships with their adolescents have important associations with the self-image of the youth.

Higher order structure of aquaporin-4.

Unlike other mammalian AQPs, multiple tetramers of AQP4 associate in the plasma membrane to form peculiar structures called Orthogonal Arrays of Particles (OAPs), that are observable by freeze-fracture electron microscopy (FFEM). However, FFEM cannot give information about the composition of OAPs of different sizes, and due to its technical complexity is not easily applicable as a routine technique. Recently, we employed the 2D gel electrophoresis BN-SDS/PAGE that for the first time enabled the biochemical isolation of AQP4-OAPs from several tissues. We found that AQP4 protein is present in several higher-order complexes (membrane pools of supra-structures) which contain different ratios of M1/M23 isoforms corresponding to AQP4-OAPs of different size. In this paper, we illustrate in detail the potentiality of 2D BN/SDS-PAGE for analyzing AQP4 supra-structures, their relationship with the dystrophin glycoprotein complex and other membrane proteins, and their role as a specific target of Neuromyelitis Optica autoantibodies.