Background: The Cochrane Collection reviews of randomized clinical trials (RCT) showed a favorable result of music therapy (MT) on individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with a placebo treatment. Objective: This study focuses on accessing whether MT can improve the development of social skills of autistic children and to check if the effects of MT are long lasting. Materials and methods: This study was designed as a pre-test/post-test and follow-up among the autistic children. Fifty-four children with mild to severe autism were selected and assigned into two groups: active and passive. The children received MT for 3 months and the groups were followed-up for 3 months. The data were analyzed with IBM-SPSS-21 software using t test and the groups were compared by analysis of covariance. Results: The results of the MT intervention were mostly apparent in the following subscales-understanding/ perspective-taking, initiating interactions, responding initiation, and maintaining interactions with others. The post-test covariance analysis results showed a significant increase in social skills' scores (p < 0.05). Also, the t test results of the paired-sample revealed that the effectiveness of MT has been continual during the followup phase. Conclusions: The study illustrated that MT is an effective intervention in improving social skills of autistic children with steady effects. MT helped in developing a form of communication for these children which led to an improvement in their ability to understand, respond, and maintain their interaction with their peers.

Highlights COVID-19 is associated with the comorbidities such as male reproductive dysfunction COVID-19 patients connected with the male reproductive dysfunction have decreased spermatogenesis, attenuated levels of testosterone via altering the cytokines such as TNF-α, IL-4, IL-6, and IL-12. Inflammation is one of the causes of COVID-19 linked to male reproductive dysfunction through TNF-α and interferon. IL-4 activated by the Th2 cells would trigger the JAK-STAT signaling and Batf/Irf4, and Bach2/Batf pathway Augmented Th2 cells by the COVID-19 alters the IL-4, JAK-STAT signaling, and leads to male reproductive dysfunction.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social and interpersonal communication disabilities and repetitive motor activities. A deficit in social interaction may be due to motor and synchronization disabilities in individuals with ASD. These disabilities serve as a hindrance for the progression of day-today life. ASD individuals are known to have variations in the neural network contributing to changes in their oral-motor activity. As the brain has experience-dependent structural plasticity, these changes in the neural network can probably be reversed with appropriate treatment Music playing a universal role in human life has been studied for its therapeutic potential in rehabilitation of ASD individuals. Music and rhythm have shown a significant potential in improving the oral-motor activities of people affected by ASD. Music based interventions are being used for children diagnosed with ASDs to improve their social communication and motor skills. This article represents the possible role of rhythmic cueing for sensorimotor regulation in ASD individuals. This can serve as a base for further research for the impact of musical therapy on coordination and oral-motor synchronization of individuals diagnosed with ASD.

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Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are pluripotent stem cells generated from somatic cells by the introduction of a combination of pluripotency-associated genes such as OCT4, SOX2, along with either KLF4 and c-MYC or NANOG and LIN28 via retroviral or lentiviral vectors. Most importantly, hiPSCs are similar to human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) functionally as they are pluripotent and can potentially differentiate into any desired cell type when provided with the appropriate cues, but do not have the ethical issues surrounding hESCs. For these reasons, hiPSCs have huge potential in translational medicine such as disease modeling, drug screening, and cellular therapy. Indeed, patient-specific hiPSCs have been generated for a multitude of diseases, including many with a neurological basis, in which disease phenotypes have been recapitulated in vitro and proof-of-principle drug screening has been performed.As the techniques for generating hiPSCs are refined and these cells become a more widely used tool for understanding brain development, the insights they produce must be understood in the context of the greater complexity of the human genome and the human brain. Disease models using iPS from Rett syndrome (RTT) patient's fibroblasts have opened up a new avenue of drug discovery for therapeutic treatment of RTT. The analysis of X chromosome inactivation (XCI) upon differentiation of RTT-hiPSCs into neurons will be critical to conclusively demonstrate the isolation of pre-XCI RTT-hiPSCs in comparison to post-XCI RTThiPSCs. The current review projects on iPSC studies in RTT as well as XCI in hiPSC were it suggests for screening new potential therapeutic targets for RTT in future for the benefit of RTT patients. In conclusion, patient-specific drug screening might be feasible and would be particularly helpful in disorders where patients frequently have to try multiple drugs before finding a regimen that works.