Purpose: Patients with one of the 22q11.2 deletion syndromes provide a unique opportunity to research the interface between genetics and brain-behavior relationships. This study investigates the neuropsychological characteristics and behavioral phenotype of children with this deletion syndrome. Methods: We report updated findings from descriptive and nonparametric analyses of neuropsychological data from 80 children with the 22q11.2 deletion. Results: The subjects showed higher verbal than nonverbal IQ scores, assets in verbal memory, and deficits in the areas of attention, story memory, visuospatial memory, arithmetic performance relative to other areas of achievement, and psychosocial functioning. Conclusion: Children with 22q11.2 deletion syndromes exhibit a behavioral phenotype reflective of nonverbal learning disabilities, concomitant language deficits, and social-emotional concerns. Genetics in Medicine, 2001:3(1):34 -39.

Purpose: The purpose of this investigation is to describe the communication profile of children with the 22q11.2 deletion syndrome from infancy through school age and to examine the influence of other medical aspects, such as palate anomalies, learning disorders, and cardiac defects of the syndrome to communication. Methods:Seventy-nine children were examined using standardized tests of speech and language and perceptual measures of resonance and voice. Results: Results show significant delay in emergence of speech and language milestones with delay/disorder in speech-language processes persisting into the school aged years, including those children diagnosed with nonverbal learning disabilities. Persistent articulation and resonance disorders were also present,

Niemann-Pick type C (NP-C) disease is a neurovisceral lysosomal storage disease characterized by neurological dysfunction, hepatosplenomegaly, and early death. Natural history studies are very difficult to perform due to the low incidence and high heterogeneity of disease in the human population. Sixteen cats with a spontaneously occurring missense mutation in NPC1 were evaluated over time to define the progression of neurological and hepatic disease. Affected cats had remarkably regular onsets of specific signs of cerebellar and vestibular system dysfunction with progressive severity of dysfunction quantified by post-rotatory nystagmus and brain stem auditory evoked response measures. NP-C disease cats also showed increasing serum activity of alanine aminotransferase, asparate aminotransferase, and cholesterol with advancing age. Affected cats lived to a mean age of 20.5 +/- 4.8 weeks. Central nervous system and hepatic lesions were similar to those described in human patients. These data are the first to document progressive hepatic disease in the feline model and demonstrate the importance of liver disease as part of the NP-C disease phenotype. Both neurological and hepatic measures of disease onset and severity can be used as a baseline with which to assess the efficacy of experimental therapies of NP-C disease in the feline model.

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