Glutamatergic synapse in autism: a complex story for a complex disorder.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder whose pathophysiological mechanisms are still unclear. Hypotheses suggest a role for glutamate dysfunctions in ASD development, but clinical studies investigating brain and peripheral glutamate levels showed heterogenous results leading to hypo- and hyper-glutamatergic hypotheses of ASD. Recently, studies proposed the implication of elevated mGluR5 densities in brain areas in the pathophysiology of ASD. Thus, our objective was to characterize glutamate dysfunctions in adult subjects with ASD by quantifying (1) glutamate levels in the cingulate cortex and periphery using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy and metabolomics, and (2) mGluR5 brain density in this population and in a validated animal model of ASD (prenatal exposure to valproate) at developmental stages corresponding to childhood and adolescence in humans using positron emission tomography. No modifications in cingulate Glu levels were observed between individuals with ASD and controls further supporting the difficulty to evaluate modifications in excitatory transmission using spectroscopy in this population, and the complexity of its glutamate-related changes. Our imaging results showed an overall increased density in mGluR5 in adults with ASD, that was only observed mostly subcortically in adolescent male rats prenatally exposed to valproic acid, and not detected in the stage corresponding to childhood in the same animals. This suggest that clinical changes in mGluR5 density could reflect the adaptation of the glutamatergic dysfunctions occurring earlier rather than being key to the pathophysiology of ASD.

Autism spectrum disorder during French COVID-19 lockdown: The importance of individualized support.

AIM: This observational and repeated measures study assesses the impact of the first, most restrictive, COVID-19 lockdown in France on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families. METHOD: During the first COVID-19 lockdown, families of ASD children enrolled in the day-care centre of the child and adolescent psychiatry department of the Tours University Hospital were contacted weekly. A total of 95 parents took part in this study between the 18th of March and the 8th of May 2020. Advice and personalized support materials were provided by professionals involved in children's care. Questions regarding clinical outcomes were addressed to parents, and their assessments were reported on a 5-point Likert scale. Two time points were considered: the first 3 weeks and the three last weeks of the lockdown period. RESULTS: No difference was highlighted between clinical scores collected at the beginning and at the end of the lockdown. No effect of intellectual disability, accommodation type (house or apartment) or parental status was observed. The reasons for the relatively minor impact of the COVID-19 lockdown observed in this study are discussed. CONCLUSIONS: Individualized and regular support provided by caregivers, familiar with ASD children's clinical specificities, in the context of a trusted relationship with parents may have contributed to the stability of this population. This 'tailor-made' approach should be promoted, in order to help support families of ASD children in this challenging period.

Brain mechanisms involved in angry prosody change detection in school-age children and adults, revealed by electrophysiology.

Voices transmit social signals through speech and/or prosody. Emotional prosody conveys key information about the emotional state of a speaker and is thus a crucial cue that one has to detect in order to develop efficient social communication. Previous studies in adults reported different brain responses to emotional than to neutral prosodic deviancy. The aim of this study was to characterize such specific emotional deviancy effects in school-age children. The mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a evoked potentials, reflecting automatic change detection and automatic attention orienting, respectively, were obtained for neutral and emotional angry deviants in both school-age children (n = 26) and adults (n = 14). Shorter latencies were found for emotional than for neutral preattentional responses in both groups. However, whereas this effect was observed on the MMN in adults, it appeared in an early discriminative negativity preceding the MMN in children. A smaller P3a amplitude was observed for the emotional than for the neutral deviants at all ages. Overall, the brain responses involved in specific emotional change processing are already present during childhood, but responses have not yet reached an adult pattern. We suggest that these processing differences might contribute to the known improvement of emotional prosody perception between childhood and adulthood.

Cortical Processing of Vocal and Nonvocal Sounds in Cochlear-Implanted Children: An Electrophysiological Study.

OBJECTIVES: For prelingually deaf children, cochlear implants (CIs) can restore auditory input to the auditory cortex and the ability to acquire spoken language. Language development is strongly intertwined with voice perception. The aim of this electrophysiological study was to investigate human voice processing using measures of cortical auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) in pediatric CI users. DESIGN: Cortical AEPs were measured in 8 CI children (4 to 12 years old) with good auditory and language performance and 8 normal-hearing (NH) age-matched controls. The auditory stimuli were nonspeech vocal sounds (laughing, sighing, coughing) and environmental sounds (e.g., telephones, alarms, cars, bells, water, wind). Independent component analysis was used to minimize the CI artifact in cortical AEPs. RESULTS: Fronto-temporal positivity to vocal sounds was found in NH children, with a significant effect in the 140 to 240 msec latency range. In CI children, there was a positive response to vocal sounds in the 170 to 250 msec latency range, with a more diffuse and anterior distribution than in the NH children. CONCLUSIONS: Cortical responses to vocal sounds were recorded in CI children. The topography and latency of response to voice differed from that of NH children. The results suggest that cortical reorganization for processing vocal sounds may occur in congenitally deaf children fitted with a CI.

Eye Movement Monitoring and Maturation of Human Face Exploration.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to characterize ocular exploration of neutral and emotional faces in the typical development of a child. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: In this eye-tracking study, visual exploration of faces (with neutral or emotional expressions: happiness or sadness) was characterized in a population of 52 children (24 girls and 28 boys from 4 to 15 years of age) and 44 adults (22 women and 22 men from 18 to 35 years of age). The time spent on the eyes, nose and mouth of the faces was measured. RESULTS: All participants spent more time on the eyes (13%) rather than the nose and mouth (6%). The youngest participants spent less time exploring the eyes than the older participants, suggesting the progressive establishment of interest in these informative regions of the face during maturation. This process seemed to occur later in females (7-9 years) than males (4-6 years). CONCLUSION: These results confirm the importance of the eye area and the capacity of this region to capture attention. In addition, this study shows that the exploration of this region increases with age and is lower among girls aged 4-6 years compared with boys of the same age.

The flavonoid resokaempferol improves insulin secretion from healthy and dysfunctional pancreatic ß-cells.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The pharmacology of flavonoids on ß-cell function is largely undefined especially in the context of defective secretion of insulin. We sought to identify flavonoids that increased the insulin-secreting function of ß-cells and to explore the underlying mechanisms. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH: INS-1 ß-cells in culture and islets of Langerhans isolated from control and diabetic male rats were used for insulin secretion experiments. Pharmacological and electrophysiological approaches were used for mechanistic studies. KEY RESULTS: Among a set of flavonoids, exposure of INS-1 ß-cells to resokaempferol (ResoK) enhanced glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and therefore we further characterised its activity and its pharmacological mechanism. ResoK glucose-dependently enhanced insulin secretion in INS-1 ß-cells and pancreatic islets isolated from rats. Mechanistically, whole cell patch clamp recordings in INS-1 cells showed that ResoK rapidly and dose-dependently enhanced the L-type Ca2+ current whereas it was inactive towards T-type Ca2+ current. Accordingly, pharmacological inhibition of L-type Ca2+ current but not T-type Ca2+ current blocked the effects of ResoK on glucose-stimulated insulin secretion. ResoK was still active on dysfunctional ß-cells as it ameliorated glucose-stimulated insulin secretion in glucotoxicity-induced dysfunctional INS-1 cells and in pancreatic islets isolated from diabetic rats. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: ResoK is a glucose-dependent activator of insulin secretion. Our results indicated that the effects of ResoK on insulin secretion involved its capacity to stimulate L-type Ca2+ currents in cultured ß-cells. As ResoK was also effective on dysfunctional ß-cells, our work provides a new approach to stimulating insulin secretion, using compounds based on the structure of ResoK.

My voice or yours? An electrophysiological study.

This study examined the neural processes underlying own voice discrimination using electrophysiological methods. Event-related potentials were recorded while healthy subjects (n = 17) heard passively three oddball sequences composed of recordings of the French vowel/a/pronounced either by the participant her/himself or by two unknown persons. The results indicated that, although the mismatch negativity (MMN) displayed similar peak latency and amplitude in both conditions, the subsequent P3a clearly distinguished the two conditions since its amplitude was significantly smaller for own voice discrimination than for that of unknown voices. Moreover, the own voice discriminative response was associated with an early pre-MMN response. This early response involved a left inferior frontal component, the activity of which lasted throughout the time course of the discriminative response, which included both MMN and P3a.

Nonviral delivery of small interfering RNA into pancreas-associated immune cells prevents autoimmune diabetes.

The development of small interfering RNA (siRNA) for the treatment of human disorders has been often hampered by their low transfection efficiency in vivo. In order to overcome this major drawback, various in vivo siRNA transfection methods have been developed. However, their capacity to transfect immune or insulin-producing ß-cells within the pancreas for the treatment of autoimmune diabetes remains undetermined. We found that lipid- or polyethylenimine-based delivery agents were efficient to address siRNA molecules within pancreas-associated antigen-presenting cells (APCs) (but not ß-cells) and particularly a CD11b(+) cell population comprising both CD11b(+)CD11c(neg) macrophages and CD11b(+)CD11c(+) dendritic cells. However, the route of administration and the carrier composition greatly affected the transfection efficacy. Therapeutically, we showed that early (starting at 6-week-old) short-course treatment with lipid/Alox15-specific siRNA complex promoted long-term protection from type 1 diabetes (T1D) in wild-type (WT) nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice. Alox15 downregulation in pancreas-associated CD11b(+) cells significantly upregulated a variety of costimulatory molecules and particularly the programmed death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) pathway involved in tolerance induction. Concomitantly, we found that regulatory T cells were increased in the pancreas of lipid/Alox15 siRNA-treated NOD mice. Collectively, our data provide new insights into the development of siRNA-based therapeutics for T1D.

Dynamics of anticipatory mechanisms during predictive context processing.

We employed an electroencephalography paradigm manipulating predictive context to dissociate the neural dynamics of anticipatory mechanisms. Subjects either detected random targets or targets preceded by a predictive sequence of three distinct stimuli. The last stimulus in the three-stimulus sequence (decisive stimulus) did not require any motor response but 100% predicted a subsequent target event. We showed that predictive context optimises target processing via the deployment of distinct anticipatory mechanisms at different times of the predictive sequence. Prior to the occurrence of the decisive stimulus, enhanced attentional preparation was manifested by reductions in the alpha oscillatory activities over the visual cortices, resulting in facilitation of processing of the decisive stimulus. Conversely, the subsequent 100% predictable target event did not reveal the deployment of attentional preparation in the visual cortices, but elicited enhanced motor preparation mechanisms, indexed by an increased contingent negative variation and reduced mu oscillatory activities over the motor cortices before movement onset. The present results provide evidence that anticipation operates via different attentional and motor preparation mechanisms by selectively pre-activating task-dependent brain areas as the predictability gradually increases.

Quality of life of adolescents with autism spectrum disorders: comparison to adolescents with diabetes.

Relationships are of great importance during adolescence. Because of their social, communication and behavioral impairments, adolescents with Asperger's syndrome (AS) or high functioning autism (HFA) probably suffer from considerable impairment of their quality of life when facing their peers in school. Nevertheless, only one recent study has been published on this subject, indicating a lower health-related quality of life in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) than in healthy controls. The goals of our study were to clarify the consequences of autistic disorder without mental retardation on such adolescents' daily lives, and to consider them in comparison with the impact of a chronic somatic disease (diabetes) and with the period of adolescence itself, using the VSP-A questionnaire. Adolescents with diabetes were chosen as a comparison group because of the encumbrance of having a constant need for insulin supplementation, to be assimilated to the constant need for communicative adjustments in teenagers with ASD, and the consequences in daily life. The effects of social skill training and social support on quality of life and the appropriateness of using the VSP-A in this population were also studied. Twenty-six adolescents with AS and HFA, 44 diabetic adolescents, and 250 controls completed a self-administered and validated questionnaire on quality of life, the VSP-A. Scores for adolescents with ASD were significantly lower than those of the control and the diabetic adolescents, especially for friendships, leisure time, and affective and sexual relationships. On the other hand, better scores were obtained for the relationships with parents and teachers and for self-image. Social parameters affected the quality of life of subjects with ASD, such as having friends, regularly participating in a sport, and having the support of a school carer. For subjects with autistic spectrum disorders and without mental retardation, impairment of quality of life is significant in adolescence and young adulthood. Such adolescents are dissatisfied with their relationships, although they often have real motivation to succeed with them. Relevance of VSP-A questionnaire in these special individuals is discussed.

Neural repetition suppression to vocal and non-vocal sounds.

Adaptation to the sensory environment is essential in everyday life, to anticipate future events and quickly detect and respond to changes; and to distinguish vocal variations in congeners, for communication. The aim of the current study was to explore the effects of the nature (vocal/non-vocal) of the information to be encoded, on the establishment of auditory regularities. In electrophysiology, neural adaptation is measured by the 'Repetition Positivity' (RP), which refers to an increase in positive potential, with the increasing number of repetitions of a same stimulus. The RP results from the combined variation of several ERP components; the P1, the first positivity (∼100 ms) may reflect the onset of repetition effects. We recorded auditory evoked potentials during a roving paradigm in which trains of 4, 8 or 16 repetitions of the same stimulus were presented. Sequences of vocal and non-vocal complex stimuli were delivered, to study the influence of the type of stimulation on the characteristics of the brain responses. The P1 to each train length, and the RP responses were recorded between 90 and 200 ms, reflecting adaptation for both vocal and non-vocal stimuli. RP was not different between vocal and non-vocal sequences (in latency, amplitude and spatial organization) and was found to be similar to that found in previous studies using pure tones, suggesting that the repetition suppression phenomena is somehow independent of the nature of the stimulus. However, results showed faster stabilization of the P1 amplitude for non-vocal stimuli than for vocal stimuli, which require more repetitions. This revealed different dynamics for the establishment of regularity encoding for non-vocal and vocal stimuli, indicating that the richness of vocal sounds may require further processing before full neural adaptation occurs.

Relationship between Behavioral and Objective Measures of Sound Intensity in Normal-Hearing Listeners and Hearing-Aid Users: A Pilot Study.

Background: For hearing-impaired individuals, hearing aids are clinically fit according to subjective measures of threshold and loudness. The goal of this study was to evaluate objective measures of loudness perception that might benefit hearing aid fitting. Method: Seventeen adult hearing aid users and 17 normal-hearing adults participated in the study. Outcome measures including categorical loudness scaling, cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs), and pupillometry. Stimuli were 1-kHz tone bursts presented at 40, 60, and 80 dBA. Results: Categorical loudness scaling showed that loudness significantly increased with intensity for all participants (p < 0.05). For CAEPs, high intensity was associated with greater P1, N1, and P2 peak amplitude for all listeners (p < 0.05); a significant but small effect of hearing aid amplification was observed. For all participants, pupillometry showed significant effects of high intensity on pupil dilation (p < 0.05); there was no significant effect of hearing aid amplification. A Focused Principal Component analysis revealed significant correlations between subjective loudness and some of the objective measures. Conclusion: The present data suggest that intensity had a significant impact on loudness perception, CAEPs, and pupil response. The correlations suggest that pupillometry and/or CAEPs may be useful in determining comfortable amplification for hearing aids.

Liver-Expressed Antimicrobial Peptide 2 antagonizes the insulinostatic effect of ghrelin in rat isolated pancreatic islets.

The hormone ghrelin is the endogenous agonist of the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) termed growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHSR). Ghrelin inhibits glucose-stimulated insulin secretion by activating pancreatic GHSR. Recently, Liver-Expressed Antimicrobial Peptide 2 (LEAP2) was recognized as an endogenous GHSR ligand that blocks ghrelin-induced actions. Nonetheless, the effect of LEAP2 on glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from pancreatic islets is unknown. We aimed at exploring the activity of LEAP2 on glucose-stimulated insulin secretion. Islets of Langerhans isolated from rat pancreas were exposed to glucose in the presence or in the absence of LEAP2 and ghrelin and then insulin secretion was assayed. LEAP2 did not modulate glucose-stimulated insulin secretion. However, LEAP2 blocked the insulinostatic action of ghrelin. Our data show that LEAP2 behaves as an antagonist of pancreatic GHSR.

Reduced production of isoprostanes by peri-pancreatic adipose tissue from Zucker fa/fa rats as a new mechanism for ß-cell compensation in insulin resistance and obesity.

During early stages of type 2 diabetes, named prediabetes, pancreatic ß-cells compensate for insulin resistance through increased insulin secretion in order to maintain normoglycemia. Obesity leads to the development of ectopic fat deposits, among which peri-pancreatic white adipose tissue (pWAT) can communicate with ß-cells through soluble mediators. Thus we investigated whether pWAT produced oxygenated lipids, namely isoprostanes and neuroprostanes and whether they can influence ß-cell function in obesity. In the Zucker fa/fa rat model, pWAT and epididymal white adipose tissue (eWAT) displayed different inflammatory profiles. In obese rats, pWAT, but not eWAT, released less amounts of 5-F2t-isoprostanes, 15-F2t-isoprostanes, 4-F4t-neuroprostanes and 10-F4t-neuroprostane compared to lean animals. These differences could be explained by a greater induction of antioxidant defenses enzymes such as SOD-1, SOD-2, and catalase in pWAT of obese animals compared to eWAT. In addition, sPLA2 IIA, involved in the release of isoprostanoids from cellular membranes, was decreased in pWAT of obese animals, but not in eWAT, and may also account for the reduced release of oxidized lipids by this tissue. At a functional level, 15-F2t-isoprostane epimers, but not 5-F2t-isoprostanes, were able to decrease glucose-induced insulin secretion in pancreatic islets from Wistar rats. This effect appeared to be mediated through activation of the thromboxane A2 receptor and reduction of cAMP signaling in pancreatic islets. In conclusion, through the removal of an inhibitory tone exerted by isoprostanes, we have shown, for the first time, a new mechanism allowing ß-cells to compensate for insulin resistance in obesity that is linked to a biocommunication between adipose tissue and ß-cells.

Design and characterization of a triazole-based growth hormone secretagogue receptor modulator inhibiting the glucoregulatory and feeding actions of ghrelin.

The growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHSR) is a G protein-coupled receptor that regulates essential physiological functions. In particular, activation of GHSR in response to its endogenous agonist ghrelin promotes food intake and blood glucose increase. Therefore, compounds aimed at blocking GHSR signaling constitute potential options against obesity-related metabolic disorders. We have previously developed potent ligands of GHSR based on a triazole scaffold. Here, we report a new 3,4,5-trisubstituted 1,2,4-triazole compound, named JMV 6616, that potently blocks GHSR activity in vitro and in vivo. Specifically, in HEK293T cells JMV 6616 behaves as an inverse agonist since it binds to GHSR and inhibits its ghrelin-independent signaling. Accordingly, using purified labeled GHSR assembled into lipid nanodiscs we found that JMV 6616 decreases GHSR-catalyzed G protein activation and stabilizes an inactive receptor conformation. Importantly, JMV 6616 also acts on native GHSR since it blocks the insulinostatic effect of ghrelin in pancreatic islets. In mice, JMV 6616 inhibits blood glucose-raising effects of ghrelin treatment and the orexigenic actions of acute ghrelin administration. Together, our data suggest that this triazole-derived modulator of GHSR holds promise to mitigate several pathological features associated with eating and metabolic disorders.

Emotional visual mismatch negativity: a joint investigation of social and non-social dimensions in adults with autism.

Unusual behaviors and brain activity to socio-emotional stimuli have been reported in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Atypical reactivity to change and intolerance of uncertainty are also present, but little is known on their possible impact on facial expression processing in autism. The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is an electrophysiological response automatically elicited by changing events such as deviant emotional faces presented among regular neutral faces. While vMMN has been found altered in ASD in response to low-level changes in simple stimuli, no study has investigated this response to visual social stimuli. Here two deviant expressions were presented, neutral and angry, embedded in a sequence of repetitive neutral stimuli. vMMN peak analyses were performed for latency and amplitude in early and late time windows. The ASD group presented smaller amplitude of the late vMMN to both neutral and emotional deviants compared to the typically developed adults (TD) group, and only the TD group presented a sustained activity related to emotional change (i.e., angry deviant). Source reconstruction of the vMMNs further revealed that any change processing elicited a reduced activity in ASD group compared to TD in the saliency network, while the specific processing emotional change elicited activity in the temporal region and in the insula. This study confirms atypical change processing in ASD and points to a specific difficulty in the processing of emotional changes, potentially playing a crucial role in social interaction deficits. Nevertheless, these results require to be further replicated with a greater sample size and generalized to other emotional expressions.

Early Intervention in Severe Autism: Positive Outcome Using Exchange and Development Therapy.

Early intervention programs positively affect key behaviors for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, most of these programs do not target children with severe autistic symptomatology associated with intellectual disability (ID). This study aimed to investigate the psychological and clinical outcomes of children with severe autism and ID enrolled in the Tailored and Inclusive Program for Autism-Tours (TIPA-T). The first step of the TIPA-T is the Exchange and Development Therapy (EDT): an individual neurofunctional intervention consisting of one-to-one exchanges between a child and a therapist taking place in a pared-down environment. It aims to rehabilitate psychophysiological abilities at the roots of social communication through structured sequences of "social play." Cognitive and socio-emotional skills and general development were evaluated with the Social Cognitive Evaluation Battery scale and the Brunet-Lézine Scale-Revised, respectively, before and after 9 months of intervention in 32 children with ASD and ID. Autistic symptomatology was evaluated with the Behavior Summarized Evaluation-Revised scale at five time-points in a subset of 14 children, both in individual and group settings. Statistically significant post-intervention improvements were found in cognitive and socio-emotional skills. All but one child showed improvements in at least one social domain, and 78% of children gained one level in at least four social domains. Twenty-nine children improved in cognitive domains, with 66% of children improving in at least three cognitive domains. Autistic symptomatology evaluated in one-to-one settings significantly decreased with therapy; this reduction was observed in more than 85% of children. In group settings, autistic symptomatology also decreased in more than 60% of children. Global developmental age significantly increased by 3.8 months. The TIPA-T, including EDT in particular, improves socio-emotional skills of most children with ASD and reduces autistic symptomatology, yet with heterogeneous outcomes profiles, in line with the strong heterogeneity of profiles observed in ASD. At the group level, this study highlights the benefits of the TIPA-T for children with severe autism and associated ID. Assessment of autistic core symptoms showed an improvement of social interaction, both in one-to-one and group evaluations, demonstrating the generalizability of the skills learned during the EDT.

When Alterations in Social Cognition Meet Subjective Complaints in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evaluation With the "ClaCoS" Battery.

Background: Deficit in social communication is a core feature in Autism Spectrum Disorder but remains poorly assessed in classical clinical practice, especially in adult populations. This gap between needs and practice is partly due to a lack of standardized evaluation tools. The multicentric Research group in psychiatry GDR3557 (Institut de Psychiatrie) developed a new battery for social cognitive evaluation named "ClaCoS," which allows testing the main components of social cognition: Emotion Recognition, Theory of Mind, Attributional Style, and Social Perception and Knowledge. It further provides an assessment of subjective complaints in social cognition. Methods: We compared the social cognition abilities of 45 adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder without intellectual disability and 45 neurotypically developed volunteers using the "ClaCoS" battery, in order to determine its relevance in the evaluation of social cognition impairments in autism. A correlational approach allowed us to test the links between subjective complaints and objectively measured impairments for the different components of social cognition. Results: As expected, the Autism Spectrum Disorder group showed deficits in all four components of social cognition. Moreover, they reported greater subjective complaints than controls regarding their social abilities, correlated to the neuropsychological assessments. Conclusion: The "ClaCoS" battery is an interesting tool allowing to assess social impairments in autism and to specify the altered components, for a better adjustment of tailored social cognition training programs. Our results further suggest that people with Autism Spectrum Disorder have a good social cognitive insight, i.e., awareness into social cognitive functioning, and may thus benefit from social cognitive training tools.

Absence of anti-pendrin auto-antibodies in the sera of Tunisian patients with autoimmune thyroid diseases.

BACKGROUND: We previously demonstrated that the PDS gene is involved in the genetic susceptibility to autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITD) in Tunisia. In the same population, we now investigated the presence of anti-pendrin auto-antibodies (aAbs) in AITD patients' sera. METHODS: Thirty seven Tunisian AITD patients and 19 healthy subjects from families previously linked to the PDS gene, 75 unrelated patients and 20 healthy unrelated subjects were included in our study. The detection of anti-pendrin aAbs in patients' sera was performed by ELISA using membrane protein extracts of CHO cells expressing pendrin (CHO-hPDS) and by immunofluorescence using transient COS-7 cells expressing a GFP tagged pendrin. CHO cells transfected with human TPO in the same ELISA conditions were used as positive control. RESULTS: The majority of AITD patients' sera were positive for the presence of anti-TPO aAbs. In contrast, no reactivity was detected with CHO-hPDS membrane protein extracts. Likewise, no significant immunostaining was found on transfected COS-7cells upon exposure to patients' and controls' sera. CONCLUSIONS: Our data point to the absence of anti-pendrin aAbs in Tunisian AITD patients' sera.

Development of cortical auditory responses to speech in noise in unilaterally deaf adults following cochlear implantation.

BACKGROUND: For patients with single-sided deafness (SSD), restoration of binaural function via cochlear implant (CI) has been shown to improve speech understanding in noise. The objective of this study was to investigate changes in behavioral performance and cortical auditory responses following cochlear implantation. DESIGN: Prospective longitudinal study. SETTING: Tertiary referral center. METHODS: Six adults with SSD were tested before and 12 months post-activation of the CI. Six normal hearing (NH) participants served as experimental controls. Speech understanding in noise was evaluated for various spatial conditions. Cortical auditory evoked potentials were recorded with /ba/ stimuli in quiet and in noise. Global field power and responses at Cz were analyzed. RESULTS: Speech understanding in noise significantly improved with the CI when speech was presented to the CI ear and noise to the normal ear (p<0.05), but remained poorer than that of NH controls (p<0.05). N1 peak amplitude measure in noise significantly increased after CI activation (p<0.05), but remained lower than that of NH controls (p<0.05) at 12 months. After 12 months of CI experience, cortical responses in noise became more comparable between groups. CONCLUSION: Binaural restoration in SSD patients via cochlear implantation improved speech performance noise and cortical responses. While behavioral performance and cortical auditory responses improved, SSD-CI outcomes remained poorer than that of NH controls in most cases, suggesting only partial restoration of binaural hearing.