Parental involvement as an etiological moderator of middle childhood oppositional defiant disorder.

The goal of this study was to investigate parental involvement as an etiologic moderator of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) during middle childhood. Previous studies examining the influence of genetic and environmental factors on ODD have not considered whether and how these factors might vary by parental involvement. We thus conducted a series of "latent genetic by measured environmental" interaction analyses, in which measured parental involvement was allowed to moderate genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental influences on child ODD. Participants include 1,027 twin pairs (age ranged from 6 to 11 years old) from the Michigan State University Twin Registry. Results did indeed suggest that the etiology of ODD varies with maternal involvement, such that genetic influence on ODD became more prominent as maternal involvement decreased. However, these results were specific to children's perceptions of maternal involvement and did not extend to maternal perceptions of her involvement. There was no evidence that paternal involvement moderated the etiology of ODD, regardless of informant. The different results found in twins' and parents' data are consistent with those in previous research showing that children may have different perceptions from parents' about their family relationships and that this discrepancy needs to be taken into account in future research. (PsycINFO Database Record

Emerging effortful control in infancy and toddlerhood and maternal support: A child driven or parent driven model?

This study examined the association between children's temperamental characteristics of rudimentary effortful control (EC) and mothers' supportive reactions to their children's negative emotions in infancy and toddler period. One hundred and fifty eight (78 girls) Taiwanese children's EC was assessed at 12 and 24 months with mothers' report on the very short-form scales of Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ) and Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (ECBQ) respectively. The mothers also completed questionnaires to assess their comforting behaviors at 12 months and both comforting and cognitive assistance to their children's expression of negative emotions when the child was 24 months old. A structural model was used to examine within- and across-time relations between children's EC and the maternal support. The results showed continuity of EC related temperament from infancy to toddlerhood and the 12-month rudimentary EC positively predicted mothers' comforting and cognitive assistance at 24 months, suggesting that mothers modulate their use of support in accordance with their prior knowledge of their children's regulatory capacities. The results indicated an influence of infants' temperament on adult behaviors, supporting potential evocative child effects on mothers' emotion coaching behaviors.

Human isolates of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium from Taiwan displayed significantly higher levels of antimicrobial resistance than those from Denmark.

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium is a major zoonotic pathogen with a high prevalence of antimicrobial resistance. This pathogen can disseminate across borders and spread far distances via the food trade and international travel. In this study, we compared the genotypes and antimicrobial resistance of 378 S. Typhimurium isolates collected in Taiwan and Denmark between 2009 and 2010. Genotyping revealed that many S. Typhimurium strains were concurrently circulating in Taiwan, Denmark and other countries in 2009 and 2010. When compared to the isolates collected from Denmark, the isolates from Taiwan displayed a significantly higher level of resistance to 11 of the 12 tested antimicrobials. Seven genetic clusters (A-G) were designated for the isolates. A high percentage of the isolates in genetic clusters C, F and G were multidrug-resistant. Of the isolates in cluster C, 79.2% were ASSuT-resistant, characterized by resistance to ampicillin, streptomycin, sulfamethoxazole, and tetracycline. In cluster F, 84.1% of the isolates were ACSSuT-resistant (resistant to ASSuT and chloramphenicol). Cluster G was unique to Taiwan and characterized in most isolates by the absence of three VNTRs (ST20, ST30 and STTR6) as well as a variety of multidrug resistance profiles. This cluster exhibited very high to extremely high levels of resistance to several first-line drugs, and among the seven clusters, it displayed the highest levels of resistance to cefotaxime and ceftazidime, ciprofloxacin and gentamicin. The high prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in S. Typhimurium from Taiwan highlights the necessity to strictly regulate the use of antimicrobials in the agriculture and human health care sectors.

Correlations between cortisol level and internalizing disposition of young children are increased by selecting optimal sampling times and aggregating data.

To determine the optimal time for testing the association between personality traits and cortisol levels, and the number of sampling days needed for reliable results to be obtained for preschool-aged children, ambulatory salivary sampling for cortisol was performed on 39 preschoolers at four different times for 10 consecutive school days. A repeated-measure ANOVA revealed a significant day effect, time effect, and day by time interaction. Further tests of day effect revealed that within-subject cortisol levels differed significantly in the early morning, early afternoon, and late afternoon cortisol data, but not in the late morning; group average levels of cortisol assessed in the early mornings are significantly different among the days, so are the ones measured in early and late afternoon. Mid-afternoon cortisol levels showed the most significant day effect and the highest correlation with internalizing disposition. In addition, the probability of finding significant correlations between cortisol levels and internalizing disposition increased with a greater number of aggregated cortisol measures. The tentative conclusion is that to avoid under-representation of the correlations between cortisol levels and personality variables, both sampling time selection and data aggregation are important.