Development of language in 18-30-month-old HIV-1-infected but not ill children.

Thirty-six children (age range, 18-30 months) born to HIV-1-infected mothers were studied for speech development by matching 18 infected with 18 non-infected subjects for age, sex and socioeconomic status. All the children were in good health. Each child was given three comprehension and three production tasks. In addition, each child's mean length of utterance (MLU) was obtained by observation of natural child-parent interactions. The development quotients (DQ) were assessed by Brunet-Lézine's tests. Infection significantly affected children's MLU, the infected children being less advanced than those non-infected. Both infected and non-infected children progressed in language acquisition from the second to the third year of age, but infected children had significantly greater production difficulty than non-infected children in the second year of life. The matched subjects design adopted gives some strength to the conclusion that HIV-1 infection impairs the genesis rather than the later development of language in infected but not ill children.

How frequent and how early does the neurological involvement in HIV-positive children occur? Preliminary results of a prospective study.

To study the natural history of the neurological involvement in pediatric human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, 77 children born to seropositive mothers have been followed up since birth. The median follow-up time has been 17.5 months. Fourteen children were classified as infected, 34 as not infected, and 21 as indeterminable. Only two children with full-blown acute immune deficiency syndrome had severe neurological manifestations. "Soft" neurological signs were found in six infected, and ten non-infected children (chi 2, P < 0.05). The mean development quotient and IQ scores in the infected and the non-infected children were 82.22, and 93.15, respectively (Mann-Whitney test, P > 0.05). These data suggest that neurological and developmental abnormalities do not occur early in the course of vertical HIV infection and that they are associated with severe immunodeficiency.

[Gastric trichobezoar: a case report (author's transl)]. / Uno caso di tricobezoario gastrico.

We describe the case of an 11 years old girl admitted to investigate an abdominal mass. The patient presented with abdominal pain, halitosis, exhaustion, started about 1 year prior to admission. An upper gastrointestinal tract with barium and a gastric endoscopy showed a massive trichobezoar which was then surgically removed. A detailed medical history revealed a prolonged habit of trichophagia.