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C C Cunningham

Publications and source records attributed to C C Cunningham.

100 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Parents of Down's syndrome babies: their early needs.

The paper reports the results of detailed interviews with parents of Down's syndrome infants shortly after their being informed of the diagnosis. It reviews previous studies and confirms a number of findings. 1. The majority of parents wish to be told of the diagnosis as soon as possible and with the spouse present. 2. They do not automatically resent the 'teller'. 3. They wish to be told directly but sympathetically, in private and have access to the baby. 4. Several interviews are needed at short intervals following the initial telling for parents to ask further questions and to assimilate more information about their child's condition.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Health visitor support for families with Down's syndrome infants.

A health visitor was seconded to a university based research team studying intervention with families who have an infant with Down's syndrome. She was given a 3-week practical training and then provided a home-based service for 61 families, visiting every 6 weeks until 2 years of age. Infant development and parental satisfaction with the service were compared to previous findings of the research group. Parental satisfaction was found to be very high and the progress of the infants compared favourably to previous studies. Following this, two field health visitors were given the training and then provided a service in their local areas. The progress of the infants was monitored at 6-month intervals until 2 years of age, and parents were interviewed. Again no differences were found in the developmental progress of the infants and previous groups and parental satisfaction was high. The limitations of the training and some implications for practice were discussed.

Child Development↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Breast feeding in infants with Down's syndrome.

Fifty-nine mothers of infants with Down's syndrome were interviewed about methods of early feeding and the problems encountered. Antenatally, 29 mothers had wished to breast feed and 16 were successful. According to the mothers, 31 babies had no difficulty in establishing sucking, 4 were slow for less than 1 week, 8 took 1 week and 16 took longer than 1 week. Severe cardiac anomaly was associated with poor sucking ability. It was concluded that infants with Down's syndrome do not inevitably have initial feeding problems and can be breast fed successfully, but their mothers need to persevere and to be given hospital support and encouragement.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Parental reactions to early intervention with their Down's syndrome infants.

Results of early intervention programmes with Down's syndrome infants are well documented in terms of the effects on the infants' development, but less attention has been given to the reactions of parents who are required to carry out the programmes. A small scale interview study of three groups of parents receiving different 'intensities' of intervention is described. Overall, parents' view of the intervention programmes are positive but the difficulties experienced by some parents point to the need for intervenors to be sensitive to family situations and feelings and for programmes to be flexible enough to meet these needs.

Child Development↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Aspects of early social smiling by infants with Down's syndrome.

Smiling by five Down's syndrome and seven nonhandicapped infants was recorded longitudinally during face-to-face interactions with their mothers over the first 6 months of the infants' lives. Two conditions, 'mobile' (mothers were asked to talk to the baby as naturally as possible) and 'immobile' (silent and maintain an impassive face), were contrasted. Between-group comparisons confirmed previous findings of significantly delayed emergence and less frequent smiling by the infants with Down's syndrome. Their smiles were also found to be shorter, and less discriminative between the two face-to-face conditions. The non-handicapped infants showed significantly more cry/distress vocalizations in the immobile than in the mobile condition, while the reverse was found for the Down's syndrome infants. A close temporal association between smiling and eye contact with mothers was found for both groups of infants. In a free interaction condition, mothers of the Down's syndrome babies showed a stronger tendency to use kinaesthetic and tactile stimulation than mothers of the non-handicapped infants.

Child Development↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Ethanol consumption and liver mitochondria function.

The mitochondrion is the subcellular organelle affected earliest during the development of alcoholic liver disease. As a result of chronic ethanol consumption mitochondrial protein synthesis is decreased significantly due to a depression in the functioning of the mitochondrial ribosome. This causes a significant decrease in the concentrations of the thirteen mitochondria gene products, all of which are components of the oxidative phosphorylation system. Consequently, there is a depression in the rate at which ATP is synthesized in hepatic mitochondria. In addition to this loss in function, hepatic mitochondria either acutely or chronically exposed to ethanol generate increased levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS). This elevation in ROS has been demonstrated in both isolated mitochondria and hepatocytes. The increase in mitochondrial ROS production accompanying acute ethanol exposure is due to mitochondrial associated reoxidation of NADH produced during ethanol and acetaldehyde metabolism. The elevation in ROS generation observed in mitochondria from chronic ethanol consumers is likely due to decreases in mitochondrial-derived electron transport components, which in turn results in higher levels of the semiquinone forms of flavin mononucleotide and ubiquinone. Both these semiquinones readily donate electrons to molecular oxygen to form superoxide.

Alcohol Drinking↗