There is a high incidence of hypoxic-ischaemic brain injury and intraventricular haemorrhage in newborn infants, particularly those born preterm. Many die during the newborn period or suffer permanent neurodevelopmental handicaps. Hypoxic brain injury develops over several hours and could potentially be influenced by intervention. At present, no drug exists that effectively prevents infant brai...

The susceptibility genes for schizophrenia Neuregulin-1 (NRG1) and ErbB4 have critical functions during brain development and in the adult. Alterations in the ErbB4 signaling pathway cause a variety of neurodevelopmental defects including deficiencies in neuronal migration, synaptic plasticity, and myelination. I have used the ErbB4(-/-) HER4(heart) KO mice to study the neurodevelopmental insul...

To date, the pathogenesis of schizophrenia remains poorly under stood. However, neurodevelopmental theories have been used to explain this complex disorder, as converging lines of evi dence suggest abnormal trajectory of brain development as a key pathological process.1 To understand the pathogenesis through a neurodevelopmental lens, sex differences observed between men and women, including ag...

IMPORTANCE Postnatal dexamethasone is associated with reduction in bronchopulmonary dysplasia. There remains, however, concern that its short-term benefits are accompanied by long-term adverse effects e.g. poorer neurodevelopmental outcomes. OBJECTIVE Our aim was to determine the effects of administration of postnatal dexamethasone on respiratory and neurodevelopmental outcome at two years of...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Preterm birth is emerging as a major public health problem in the USA. Improvements in preterm birth and survival rates translate to increasing numbers of preterm survivors, and many develop motor, cognitive and sensory impairments. RECENT FINDINGS The review discusses the recently reported prevalence of neurodevelopmental disabilities in preterm survivors, in addition to st...

Rett Syndrome, an X-linked dominant neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by regression of language and hand use, is primarily caused by mutations in methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MECP2). Loss of function mutations in MECP2 are also found in other neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, Angelman-like syndrome and non-specific mental retardation. Furthermore, duplication of the MECP2 ge...

Anticonvulsants can increase the risk of developing neurotoxicity in infants; however, the underlying mechanism has not been elucidated to date. Thyroxine [3,5,3',5'-l-tetraiodothyronine (T4)] plays crucial roles in the development of the central nervous system. In this study, we hypothesized that induction of UDP-glucuronosyltransferase 1A1 (UGT1A1)-an enzyme involved in the metabolism of T4-b...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the role of plasma volume expansion on 1-year infant outcome after severe hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and to determine prognostic factors for adverse neurodevelopmental infant outcome. DESIGN Randomised controlled trial, observational prognostic study. SETTING Two university hospitals in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. POPULATION One hundred and seventy-two infa...

Neurodevelopmental deficits are postulated to play an important role in the etiology of persistent antisocial behavior (ASB). Yet it remains uncertain as to which particular deficits are most closely associated with ASB. We seek to advance this understanding using prospectively collected data from a birth cohort in which multiple indices of neurodevelopmental functioning and ASB were assessed. ...