OBJECTIVES: We conducted multi-directional language development tests as a part of the Research on Sensory and Communicative Disorders (RSVD) in Japan. This report discusses findings as well as factors that led to better results in children with severe-profound hearing loss. METHODS: We evaluated multiple language development tests in 33 Japanese children with cochlear implants (32 patients) and hearing aid (1 patient), including 1) Test for question and answer interaction development, 2) Word fluency test, 3) Japanese version of the Peabody picture vocabulary test-revised, 4) The standardized comprehension test of abstract words, 5) The screening test of reading and writing for Japanese primary school children, 6) The syntactic processing test of aphasia, 7) Criterion-referenced testing (CRT) for Japanese language and mathematics, 8) Pervasive development disorders ASJ rating scales, and 9) Raven's colored progressive matrices. Furthermore, we investigated the factors believed to account for the better performances in these tests. The first group, group A, consisted of 14 children with higher scores in all tests than the national average for children with hearing difficulty. The second group, group B, included 19 children that scored below the national average in any of the tests. RESULTS: Overall, the results show that 76.2% of the scores obtained by the children in these tests exceeded the national average scores of children with hearing difficulty. The children who finished above average on all tests had undergone a longer period of regular habilitation in our rehabilitation center, had their implants earlier in life, were exposed to more auditory verbal/oral communication in their education at affiliated institutions, and were more likely to have been integrated in a regular kindergarten before moving on to elementary school. CONCLUSION: In this study, we suggest that taking the above four factors into consideration will have an affect on the language development of children with severe-profound hearing loss.
Aphasia ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Child ; Child Development Disorders, Pervasive ; Cochlear Implants ; Communication Disorders ; Comprehension ; Hearing ; Hearing Aids ; Hearing Loss ; Humans ; Japan ; Language Development ; Mass Screening ; Mathematics ; Rehabilitation Centers ; Vocabulary ; Weights and Measures ; Writing

Boi-ogi-to is frequently prescribed to relieve pain for osteoarthritis in the therapy of Kampo formulation. However, it has been pointed out that the evaluation of this formulation differs among the patients. It is often showed lower effectiveness and/or non-effectiveness in the patients with advanced roentgenographic deformity, obesity, and suffering from more severe pain.
We thought that it was resulted from ingoring the abdominal-sho (symptom). Therefore, in this study, we defined the abdominal-sho of Boi-ogi-to as “frog abdominal-sho”, and administered Boi-ogi-to to 17 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee who had frog abdominal sho. As a result, in the patients with frog abdominal-sho, the formulation was moderately or even better effective in relieving pain in 77% of these patients. It was acknowledged that the effect was independent of the severity of pain, the degree of obesity, and whether the roentgenographic deformity was slight or moderate.

To investigate the effects of caloric restriction combined with physical training on the immunity in athletes, some cellular and humoral immune functions were examined in 9 young female athletes before and after a caloric restriction program. The control group consisted of 7 age-matched female non-athletes who were not on diet. The athletes continued their exercise trainings as usual and ate low-caloric diets (1, 300 kcal/day : including 60 g/day of protein) for 2 weeks. They reduced their body weights by 3.1% and their body fats by 18.2% at the end of the program. As the marker of nutritional condition, serum levels of pre-albumin and retinol binding protein were measured. Both of them at the end of 2 weeks were slightly decreased, but did not reach statistical significance, these athletes, however, showed slight hemoconcentrations after the caloric restriction program combined with physical exercise. Therefore, the total amounts of those two substances were supposed to be significantly decreased. The phagocytic activities of blood monocytes against sheep erythrocytes opsonized with IgG and saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast in the athletes were already higher than those in controls, even before the caloric restriction. After reducing their body weights, those phagocytic activities were significantly decreased (p<0.01, respectively) to the same levels of those activities in controls. The blastgenic response of T lymphocytes isolated from the athletes to the phytohaemagglutinin was also higher than the response in controls before the caloric restriction, and continued the same levels during the caloric restriction period. The complement activity and the serum concentrations of IgG, IgM, and IgA in athletes were not different from those in controls before and after the caloric restriction. The concentration of fibronectin in sera of the athletes were significantly decreased after the caloric restriction program (p<0.05) ; however, these concentrations were not significantly different from those in sera of controls. We concluded that even a moderate caloric restriction program might reduce some immune functions in the athletes continuing their daily physical trainings. The deterioration in immunity, however, might not affect their health, because those functions in the athletes of this study had been originally enhanced, and maintained the normal range after a moderate weight reduction.