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Flexible self-regulation has been shown to be an adaptive ability. This study adapted and validated the adult Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression (FREE) Scale for use with youth (FREE-Y) in community and maltreatment samples. The FREE-Y measures the ability to flexibly enhance and suppress emotion expression across an array of hypothetical social scenarios. Participants ( N = 654, 8–19 years) were included from three studies. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed a theoretically appropriate higher order factor structure. Using multiple-group CFAs, measurement invariance was achieved across maltreatment status, age, and gender. Reliabilities were adequate and construct validity was demonstrated through associations with measures of emotion regulation, psychopathology, IQ, and executive functioning. Group comparisons indicated lower Suppression and Flexibility scores for maltreated versus comparison participants. Findings suggest that the FREE-Y is a valid measure of expressive regulation ability in youth that can be applied across a range of populations.

Various approaches exist to assess population differences in biological aging. Telomere length (TL) is one such measure, and is associated with disease, disability and early mortality. Yet, issues surrounding precision and reproducibility are a concern for TL measurement. An alternative method to estimate TL using DNA methylation (DNAmTL) was recently developed. Although DNAmTL has been characterized in adult and elderly cohorts, its utility in pediatric populations remains unknown. We examined the comparability of leukocyte TL measurements generated using qPCR (absolute TL; aTL) to those estimated using DNAmTL in a high-risk pediatric cohort (

In this paper we introduce the notion of Timing of Belief (ToB) as a relevant factor of variation in common ground (CG) management in sentence-peripheral particles across different languages. CG management traces the epistemic development of mutual beliefs between speaker and addressee. Evidence for the relevance of ToB comes from a small-scale acceptability study which tested the relevance of ToB for particles in English, German, and Spanish. While these languages all possess grammaticalized structures to encode different types of knowledge asymmetries between speaker and addressee, they vary with respect to the sensitivity or encoding of ToB. The evident relevance of ToB for CG management suggests that models which focus on the dynamic character of CG development require further expansion. We hope that the fine-graded differences in CG management reported here serve to inspire an engagement with the notion of ToB and the variation we find across languages and dialects.

Background Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) for the treatment of malaria is highly effective, well tolerated and safe. Episodes of delayed haemolysis occur in up to 57.9% of patients with severe malaria treated with intravenous artesunate, mainly caused by ‘pitting’ of infected red blood cells in the spleen and the delayed loss of these once-infected RBCs (oiRBCs). Several reports indicate that post-treatment haemolysis (PTH) also occurs in uncomplicated malaria treated with oral ACT, calling for systematic investigation. Methods A prospective observational study to identify the incidence of PTH after oral ACT, defined as increased lactate dehydrogenase activity and low haptoglobin level on Day 14 after treatment. Patients were enrolled at two study centres in Germany and Italy. Study visits took place on Days 1, 3, 7, 14 and 28. Laboratory investigations included extended clinical routine laboratory tests, quantitative PfHRP2, anti-RBC antibodies and oiRBCs. The state of semi-immunity to malaria was assessed from childhood and ongoing exposure to Plasmodium spp. as per patient history. Results A total of 134 patients with uncomplicated malaria and 3-day ACT treatment were recruited. Thirty-seven (37.4%) of 99 evaluable patients with Pf and none of 9 patients with non-Pf malaria exhibited PTH on d14. Patients with PTH had higher initial parasitaemia, higher oiRBC counts on d3 and a 10-fold decrease in oiRBCs between d7 and d14 compared with patients without PTH. In patients with PTH, loss of haemoglobin was 4-fold greater in non-Africans than in Africans (−1.3 vs −0.3 g/dl). Semi-immune African patients with PTH showed markedly increased erythropoiesis on d14 compared with not semi-immune African and non-African patients with PTH. Conclusions PTH is common in patients with uncomplicated malaria and oral ACT. While the observed loss of haemoglobin will often not be clinically relevant, it could aggravate pre-existing anaemia, warranting follow-up examinations in populations at risk.

Early adverse environmental exposures during brain development are widespread risk factors for the onset of severe mental disorders and strong and consistent predictors of stress-related mental and physical illness and reduced life expectancy. Current evidence suggests that early negative experiences alter plasticity processes during developmentally sensitive time windows and affect the regular functional interaction of cortical and subcortical neural networks. This, in turn, may promote a maladapted development with negative consequences on the mental and physical health of exposed individuals. In this review, we discuss the role of functional magnetic resonance imaging-based functional connectivity phenotypes as potential biomarker candidates for the consequences of early environmental exposures-including but not limited to-childhood maltreatment. We take an expanded concept of developmentally relevant adverse experiences from infancy over childhood to adolescence as our starting point and focus our review of functional connectivity studies on a selected subset of functional magnetic resonance imaging-based phenotypes, including connectivity in the limbic and within the frontoparietal as well as default mode networks, for which we believe there is sufficient converging evidence for a more detailed discussion in a developmental context. Furthermore, we address specific methodological challenges and current knowledge gaps that complicate the interpretation of early stress effects on functional connectivity and deserve particular attention in future studies. Finally, we highlight the forthcoming prospects and challenges of this research area with regard to establishing functional connectivity measures as validated biomarkers for brain developmental processes and individual risk stratification and as target phenotypes for mechanism-based interventions.

New insights into mechanisms linking obesity to poor health outcomes suggest a role for cellular aging pathways, casting obesity as a disease of accelerated biological aging. Although obesity has been linked to accelerated epigenetic aging in middle-aged adults, the impact during childhood remains unclear. We tested the association between body mass index (BMI) and accelerated epigenetic aging in a cohort of high-risk children. Participants were children (N = 273, aged 8 to 14 years, 82% investigated for maltreatment) recruited to the Child Health Study, an ongoing prospective study of youth investigated for maltreatment and a comparison youth. BMI was measured as a continuous variable. Accelerated epigenetic aging of blood leukocytes was defined as the age-adjusted residuals of several established epigenetic aging clocks (Horvath, Hannum, GrimAge, PhenoAge) along with a newer algorithm, the DunedinPoAm, developed to quantify the pace-of-aging. Hypotheses were tested with generalized linear models. Higher age-and sex- adjusted z-scored BMI was significantly correlated with household income, blood cell counts, and three of the accelerated epigenetic aging measures: GrimAge (r = 0.31, P .0001), PhenoAge (r = 0.24, P .0001), and DunedinPoAm (r = 0.38, P .0001). In fully adjusted models, GrimAge (β = 0.07; P = .0009) and DunedinPoAm (β = 0.0017; P .0001) remained significantly associated with higher age- and sex-adjusted z-scored BMI. Maltreatment-status was not associated with accelerated epigenetic aging. In a high-risk cohort of children, higher BMI predicted epigenetic aging as assessed by two epigenetic aging clocks. These results suggest the association between obesity and accelerated epigenetic aging begins in early life, with implications for future morbidity and mortality risk.