[Specifics of visual perception in infants with familial risk of autism spectrum disorders]. / Osobennosti zritel'nogo vospriiatiia u mladentsev s semeinym riskom rasstroistv autisticheskogo spektra.

Preclinical prediction of autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) is one of the priorities of current research. Children at risk of ASD develop an atypical visual perception profile early in their lives, which influences their visual responsiveness, distribution of attention, and social orienting. In this study we have compared the oculomotor behavior in an infant at familial risk of ASD with data from two 10-month infants with typical development. The SMI RED500 eye tracker was used for acquisition. Most parameters of visual perception in the at-risk infant were found to differ significantly from these of the controls. The strategy of visual search in the at-risk infant was generally less successful (13% of attempts vs 31% and 56% in the controls) with a tendency to focus predominantly on social stimuli (50% of the total gaze time). The said changes together with longer fixation duration (576.41 ms vs 527.77 and 386.72 ms in the two controls), lower saccadic frequency (1.74 counts/ms vs 1.84 and 2.18 counts/ms), and shorter scan path length (2774.24 px vs 3612.58 and 3985.43 px) may result in difficulties in switching tasks and processing information.

[Predictors of epilepsy in children after ischemic stroke]. / Prediktory formirovaniya epilepsii u perenesshikh ishemicheskii insul't detei.

AIM: To determine clinical/instrumental predictors of symptomatic epilepsy after ischemic stroke in children. MATERIAL AND METHODS: One hundred and thirty-six patients, aged 0-15 years, with the diagnosis of ischemic stroke (ICD-10 I63.0-I63.9) were examined. The duration of the study was 18 months - 12 years. Patients were stratified into post-stroke (n=22) and control (n=114) groups, the latter included patients without epilepsy regardless of the presence of convulsive seizures in the acute stage of stroke. Predictors were determined based on EEG and characteristics of convulsive syndrome in the acute stage of stroke. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The following prognostic criteria were found: generalized type of seizures, focal type of seizures with secondary generalization, epileptiform (peak and/or peak-wave) activity, focal character of epileptiform activity, generalized type of seizures in the combination with slow wave background activity on EEG, generalized type of seizures in the combination with slow wave activity and disorganized activity on EEG.

[The assessment of neurocognitive functions in premature infants in the first year of life using Bayley Scales]. / Otsenka razvitiya neirokognitivnykh funktsii u nedonoshennykh detei pervogo goda zhizni s pomoshch'yu shkaly Beili.

AIM: To reveal the differences in neurocognitive development in premature infants and full-term infants in the first year of life. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The participants were 17 premature infants and 16 sex- and age-matched healthy full-term infants. The gestational age of preterm infants was between 28 and 36 weeks. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development 3rd Edition were used to evaluate neurocognitive abilities in infants. ANCOVA with age as a covariate was used. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Preterm infants performed significantly (p≤0.05) worse than the full-term infants on cognitive scale, receptive language, gross motor and fine motor scales. No significant differences were found between preterm and full-term infants on the expressive language scale. Two-way ANOVA revealed no significant (p≤0.05) differences between female premature infants and full-term female infants on the gross motor scale in comparison to male infants. It has been proposed that the prematurity has a specific, but not a global, negative effect on the neurocognitive development in the first year of life with the gender effect on the development of gross motor skills.

[Clinical manifestations of the onset and diagnostic problems in children with moyamoya disease].

Moyamoya disease in children is a rarely diagnosed entity. Frequent headache is the first symptom of the disease. Headache associated with moya-moya disease (HAMD) is a separated entity reported in the literature. Variants of onset, a spectrum of primary diagnoses and diagnosis verification rate of moyamoya disease in 7 children are presented. A clinical case of moya-moya disease in a 9-year boy, who was primarily diagnosed with migraine with aura, is reported. The results presented by the authors as well as literature data indicate the necessity of using magnetic-resonance angiography in children with headache attacks and focal neurologic symptoms to identify this progressive vascular pathology and timely recommend a surgical treatment.

[The inherited procoagulant and prothrombotic condition as the main etiological factor for ischemic stroke in infants].

The data on the risk factors and etiology of ischemic stroke in 31 infants, aged under 3 years, are summarized. The results of genotyping of blood coagulation and folic acid gene polymorphisms in patients and 83 healthy people are presented. Significant differences were found for -455 G>A FGB (р=0.03) and 807 C>T ITGA2 (р=0,005) polymorphisms. Different gene-gene combinations that can cause hypercoagulation and arterial thrombosis in this age were identified. The most frequent combinations include polymorphisms of genes for FGB, fibrinolysis system and folate cycle enzymes (OR=3,79 and more, p<0.05). A clinical case of ischemic stroke in a girl, aged 10 months, after operated congenital heart malformation is presented.