Emotion processing in maltreated boys and girls: Evidence for latent vulnerability.

Evidence of alterations in emotion processing in maltreated youth has been hypothesized to reflect latent vulnerability for psychopathology. However, previous studies have not systematically examined the influence of psychopathology on the results. Here, we examined emotion recognition and learning in youth who differed in terms of presence vs. absence of maltreatment and psychopathology and tested for potential sex effects. Maltreatment and psychopathology were assessed in 828 youth (514 females) aged 9-18 years using diagnostic interviews and self- and parent-report questionnaires. Emotion recognition was assessed via identification of morphed facial expressions of six universal emotions. For emotion learning, reward and punishment values were assigned to novel stimuli and participants had to learn to correctly respond/withhold response to stimuli to maximize points. A three-way interaction of maltreatment by psychopathology by emotion indicated that when psychopathology was low, maltreated youth were less accurate than non-maltreated youth for happy, fear and disgust. A three-way interaction of sex, maltreatment and emotion indicated that maltreated girls and boys were impaired for fear, but girls showed an impairment for happy, while boys for disgust. There were no effects of maltreatment, psychopathology, or sex on reward learning. However, a two-way interaction between sex and maltreatment showed that maltreated girls were worse at learning from punishment relative to non-maltreated girls, while maltreated boys were better than non-maltreated boys. The study provides the first clear evidence of latent-vulnerability in emotion recognition in maltreated youth and suggests that girls and boys might be characterized by distinct profiles of emotion recognition and learning following maltreatment.

Caveats in science-based news stories communicate caution without lowering interest.

Science stories in the media are strongly linked to changes in health-related behavior. Science writers (including journalists, press officers, and researchers) must therefore frame their stories to communicate scientific caution without disrupting coherence and disengaging the reader. In this study we investigate whether caveats ("Further research is needed to validate the results") satisfy this dual requirement. In four experiments participants read news reports with and without caveats. In Experiments 1 to 3, participants judged how cautious or confident researchers were, and how interesting or comprehensible they found the reports. News reports with caveats were judged as more cautious that those without, but levels of reader interest and comprehensibility were unaffected. In a fourth experiment, we created a mock newsroom and recruited journalism students to make judgments about which press releases should be published. Here, neither caveats nor the introduction of qualifying expressions in headlines had an effect on judgments of newsworthiness, consistent with Experiments 1 to 3. The reasons participants gave for rejecting a press release rarely referred to the caveat. Our results therefore suggest that science writers should include caveats in news reporting and that they can do so without fear of disengaging their readers or losing news uptake. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A Case of Sweet's Syndrome Secondary to Myelodysplastic Syndrome - Diagnostic and Treatment Challenges.

Sweet's Syndrome also knows as acute febrile neutrophilic dermatosis, is a rare skin's condition, that can occur either idiopathic or secondary. In the case of the latter, the syndrome can develop after certain malignancies (paraneoplastic syndrome), because of exposure to some medication or post infectious. It is more frequent in women aged between 30 and 50 years, but concerning children, the disorder is extremely rare (8% of the total number of cases), having equal sex ratio distribution. We present the case of an 11 year old male, diagnosed with systemic form of SS associated with Myelodysplastic Syndrome. The onset of the hematological condition seemingly occurred at the age of 5, when the diagnosis of chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura was established. The treatment included repeated cortisone administrations, followed by a splenectomy procedure. Admitted in our Oncopaediatric department in December 2012, the child is given the diagnosis of MS, to which severe systemical manifestations of SS were added, with partial treatment response (cortisone, cyclosporine, dapsone, indomethacin). An allogeneic bone marrow transplant was conducted at Fundeni Institute (February 2015) when the SS remission occurred, but the progression was fatal, the child developing graft-versus-host disease.