Emotional and behavioural problems were investigated in children who have a parent with multiple sclerosis (MS), in relation to factors such as family dysfunction, parental depression and illness-related characteristics. The participants were 56 MS patients, their spouses and one randomly selected child aged 4-17 years, and a comparison group of 64 children and both their parents, none of whom reported somatic illness. Emotional and behavioural problems in the children were identified by reporting of both parents and self-report using the Achenbach's Child Behaviour Checklist and Youth Self Report respectively. Parental depression and family dysfunction were explored using the Beck Depression Inventory and Family Assessment Device, respectively. The data were analysed using independent samples t-tests for between-group comparisons, Pearson r correlations between children's problems and family dysfunction or parental depression, and multiple regression analyses for identifying predictors for children's problems. Children whose parents, especially mothers, had MS presented greater emotional and behavioural problems than comparison children. Children's problems were positively associated with maternal depression and family dysfunction. Family dysfunction predicted children's overall and externalizing problems, while the severity of impairment of the ill mother predicted children's internalizing problems. Implications of these findings for clinical practice are discussed.

There is evidence that more neurons undergo apoptosis during sepsis than in normal brain tissue in certain sites where the blood-brain barrier is compromised. In this phenomenon, mitochondrial gene regulators such as bax and products such as cytochrome c seem to play important regulating and prognostic roles, respectively.

All amyotrophic lateral sclerosis cases hospitalized over a 25-year period in the University Department of Neurology in Athens were surveyed, with emphasis given to the occupation of the patients and the geographic distribution of the disease. The results showed an overrepresentation of farmers among patients and an aggregation of cases in the region of Cephalonia. These findings might suggest that environmental factors could be involved in the etiology of the disease.

Our purpose was to evaluate the role of magnetization transfer and image subtraction in detecting more enhancing lesions in brain MR imaging of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Thirty-one MS patients underwent MR imaging of the brain with T1-weighted spin echo sequences without and with magnetization transfer (MT) using a 1.5 T imager. Both sequences were acquired before and after intravenous injection of a paramagnetic contrast agent. Subtraction images in T1-weighted sequences were obtained by subtracting the pre-contrast images from the post-contrast ones. A significant difference was found between the numbers of enhanced areas in post-gadolinium T1-weighted images without and with MT (p=0.020). The post-gadolinium T1-weighted images with MT allowed the detection of an increased (13) number of enhancing lesions compared with post-gadolinium T1-weighted images without MT. A significant difference was also found between the numbers of enhanced areas in post-gadolinium T1-weighted images without MT and subtraction images without MT (p=0.020). The subtraction images without MT allowed the detection of an increased (10) number of enhancing lesions compared with post-gadolinium T1-weighted images without MT. Magnetization transfer contrast and subtraction techniques appear to be the simplest and least time-consuming applications to improve the conspicuity and detection of contrast-enhancing lesions in patients with MS.