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Los Angeles, CA – January 22, 2013 – L.A.-based House Research Institute and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced today that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given final approval to begin a clinical trial of an Auditory Brainstem Implant (ABI) procedure for children. The trial is a surgical collaboration sponsored by the House Research Institute in partnership with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Vittorio Colletti, MD of the University of Verona Hospital, Verona, Italy.

There tends to be a lot of confusion between terms Discrete Trial Training (DTT) and Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). Often times when people talk about ABA programs for children with autism, they are actually referring to DTT. DTT is one of several types of teaching strategies that fall under the umbrella of ABA.

In recognition of the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), we’re offering a free 3-month trial membership good for 20 book downloads per month to all Americans with qualifying print disabilities. Please tell everyone you know who could benefit from this promotion. From now until August 31, 2010, any individual with a qualifying disability can sign up! At the end of the 3-months,new members will receive suggestions about how to sign up for individual memberships.

MK-869 wasn't the only highly anticipated medical breakthrough to be undone in recent years by the placebo effect. From 2001 to 2006, the percentage of new products cut from development after Phase II clinical trials, when drugs are first tested against placebo, rose by 20 percent. The failure rate in more extensive Phase III trials increased by 11 percent, mainly due to surprisingly poor showings against placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in R&D, the US Food and Drug Administration approved only 19 first-of-their-kind remedies in 2007—the fewest since 1983—and just 24 in 2008. Half of all drugs that fail in late-stage trials drop out of the pipeline due to their inability to beat sugar pills.

For the melanoma patients who signed on to try a drug known as PLX4032, the clinical trial was a last resort. Their bodies were riddled with tumors, leaving them almost certainly just months to live.

But a few weeks after taking their first dose, nearly all of them began to recover.

The OPI Montana Autism Education Project is providing a limited number of FREE parent subscriptions for the Autism Training Solutions online autism/behaviorism training program. The subscriptions will begin in late March and will last for 90 days. For each individual subscription, the parent watches short online videos and then answers quizzes. Parents will have 24/7 access to 13 hours of online video lessons teaching: Antecedent Interventions Consequence Interventions Teaching New Behavior Principles of Behavior: Behavior Reduction Principles of Behavior: Reinforcement Introduction to Austim Spectrum Disorders Teaching to Request/Mand Instructional Control Participants will be asked to complete a training survey at the conclusion of the pilot project. At the end of the pilot project each participant receives a certificate of completion. More information and a free trial of the program can be found by searching the web for, "Autism Training Solutions." If you are interested in participating in this FREE training please send an email with the subject line of "ATS Parent Account" to DDOTY@MT.GOV Please include the following information in your email: Your name Your child's gender and age The town in which you live Thank you, Doug Doug Doty, Coordinator Montana Autism Education Project Montana Office of Public Instruction

Among the challenges of raising children with Asperger syndrome are the emotional ones placed upon the family. The collection of glaring social issues, mixed with subtle thinking variations and occasional unpredictable emotional swings, transforms parenting into a confusing trip of trial and error. When errors mount, family life is often mired in conflict, and the child’s issues are exacerbated. Parents may resort to blaming one another, leading to further downward spiraling.

If your child is 6 to 12 years old, he or she may be eligible to participate in the ConnectMe clinical research program. The program includes three clinical research studies evaluating the safety, tolerability, and effectiveness of an investigational drug on social interaction and communication skills in children with autism, Asperger’s Disorder, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS).

Just six treatment sessions designed to help moms of kids with developmental disabilities manage their stress can go a long way toward reducing depression and anxiety, researchers say. Parents of children with developmental disabilities often experience greater stress than moms and dads of typically-developing kids. Nonetheless, most interventions target the needs of their children with disabilities exclusively. Now, researchers say more attention ought to be paid to the unique needs of these parents. In a trial of two treatment programs, Elisabeth Dykens of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development and her colleagues found that weekly sessions with trained peer mentors could help moms conquer their stress and, in turn, interact more constructively with their children with disabilities.

May 21, 2010 — Results from a new randomized trial show that children with Tourette's syndrome and chronic tic disorders have greater improvement in tics and tic-related impairment with comprehensive behavioral intervention than with supportive therapy and education. "Historically, Tourette's syndrome has been treated with antipsychotic medications, which reduce tics but are associated with side effects that often limit their usefulness in children," lead author John Piacentini, PhD, from the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement. "So the development of an effective nonmedication treatment for children with this disorder is a major therapeutic advance."

In an effort once considered unimaginable, scientists are testing a series of drugs which they hope will improve the mental abilities of individuals with fragile X syndrome. Unlike currently available drugs that treat symptoms of fragile X — like anxiety — the new medications now in trials are designed to address core components of the disorder. The idea is not to cure fragile X, but rather to improve the mental functioning abilities of those who have it.

RCT Demonstrates the Efficacy of the LEAP Model of Early Intervention for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Research on Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and the development of interventions for children with autism have expanded greatly in recent years, though most comprehensive interventions have not received systematic, scientific evaluation. One of the few exceptions is LEAP (Learning Experiences�An Alternative Program for Preschoolers and Parents), a comprehensive intervention for preschool children with autism, developed by Phillip Strain in 1981, that uses a variety of science-based learning techniques. Although LEAP had been shown to improve child outcomes in a prior evaluation, the developers recently implemented a new experimental evaluation comparing full LEAP implementation to a reduced model based only on access to materials. With funding from the National Center for Special Education Research, principal investigator Phillip Strain and his research team conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) comparing classroom implementation of LEAP with training and mentoring by LEAP staff to classrooms in which teachers were only provided with the usual LEAP training manuals and materials. They found that providing preschool teachers with LEAP training and mentoring resulted in greater fidelity of implementation and more positive child outcomes when compared to teachers who were only given the training manuals and materials.

Imagine being almost 30 and not able to read or write. That’s what happened to Nelson Lauver, author of the memoir “Most Unlikely to Succeed, The Trials, Travels and Ultimate Triumphs of a ‘Throwaway’ Kid.” In 1969, Lauver was a fun-loving first-grader, curious about school and eager to learn. His enthusiasm came to a halt the following year when dyslexia — a broad term used to define reading and writing disabilities — went undiagnosed, not unusual in the educational system of that time.

The drug, currently called STX107, targets altered brain connections that appear in individuals with fragile X. Researchers hope that the drug will force the brain to make normal connections therefore improving learning capabilities in those with the disorder.

NCRR awarded 18 grants to help determine outcome measures and increase the likelihood of success of future trials of treatments for children. The grants were awarded to 17 Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) institutions to support 18 studies of pharmaceutical treatments for children. The CTSA consortium is a national network of 46 medical research institutions working together to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country. The $8.5 million in funding — administered by NCRR and provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development — will support studies which focus on three areas critical to health: pediatric cardiology, neonatology and pediatric neurology.