Study of clinical characteristics in young subjects with Developmental coordination disorder.

BACKGROUND: Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a chronic neurological disorder observed in children. DCD is characterized by slowness in activities and motor impairment that affects the children's daily living and academic achievements, and later their professional and social behavior. Our aim in this work was to report characteristics frequencies in a group of children with DCD and to propose a subtyping of DCD characteristics. METHODS: Thirty three clinical DCD characteristics, the mostly reported in the literature, were assessed in 129 patients, boys and girls aged from 4years to 18years, and their subtyping was proposed. The statistical analyses were carried out with the Chi square, the t-test and the correlation for the statistical differences, and with the Ward clustering method for subtyping. RESULTS: We found that there were 3.17 boys for one girl, all patients were characterized as slow, 47% were left-handers or ambidextrous, 36% and 26% had orofacial and verbal dyspraxia, respectively, 83% were found anxious, and 84% were described as being clumsy. CONCLUSIONS: It appears from these results that a child with DCD expresses more than a single difficulty. Three subtypes emerged from the statistical analysis in this study: (1) clumsiness and other characteristics except language difficulties; (2) self-esteem and peer relation without clumsiness and language difficulties; (3) language difficulties and orofacial dyspraxia.

[Persistent neurological sequelae due to cerebral malaria in a cohort of children from Mali]. / Séquelles neurologiques persistantes dues au paludisme cérébral dans une cohorte d'enfants au Mali.

INTRODUCTION: Several neurological complications are associated with cerebral malaria (CM). However, few long-term data from childhood survivors have been published. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was carried out in Mali among children followed from 1999 to 2002 after serious and complicated malaria. Our aim was to evaluate the persistent neurological sequelae associated with CM. RESULTS: This study concerned 101 subjects who had had CM. Mean age was 5.6+/-3.6 years. Twenty-eight children presented persistent neurological sequelae (27.7p.cent). Among them eight (7.9p.cent) children had developed these sequelae just after CM and 20 (19.8p.cent) a few months later: headaches, mental retardation, speech delay, bucco-facial dyspraxia, diplegia and frontal syndrome (one case each), dystonia (two cases), epilepsy (five cases) and behavior and attention disorders (15 cases). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we show that neurological signs due to CM can persist in the long run. Long-term follow-up and proper management after CM are essential.