Intact Sibling Research Articles

“It is difficult to be here with my sister but intolerable to be without her”: Intact sibling placement in residential care

Notwithstanding the debate in the literature over the outcome of intact out-of-home sibling placement, the voices and perspectives of the very children who are influenced by this out-of-home decision are rarely presented. This qualitative study examined the intact out-of-home sibling experience as described by 12 children living in houseparent residential settings in Israel. Participants' perceptions of such placement were grounded in their contradictory relationships with the sibling(s) who shared the arrangement. Informants expressed both positive and negative aspects of their out-of-home experience through their descriptions of the positive and negative dimensions of these sibling relations. Contradictions were conceptualized into four themes: comforting/discomforting, togetherness/separateness, openness/restraint, and expect more/allow less. These themes were operationalized differently within participants' two life contexts: the residential care setting and the parental home. Results demonstrate the complexity of this out-of-home placement decision and the relevance of the dialectic perspective in enhancing understanding of this experience. Practical implications are discussed.

The Ties That Bind

ABSTRACT Research on siblings in foster care has been limited to date, despite the fact that most children in out-of-home care also have siblings in system. Using administrative data, this study examines a cross-section (N = 35,216) of foster children in a large metropolitan area of the Western United States to determine the factors associated with intact sibling placement. Starting care at the same time, placement in relative care, and matched gendered pairs were highly associated with intact sibling placement, while age and placement in group care were negatively associated. A discussion in light of recent legislation is presented.

Detection of preclinical Parkinson's disease with PET

Putamen 18F-dopa uptake of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) is reduced by at least 35% at onset of symptoms; therefore, positron-emission tomography (PET) can be used to detect preclinical disease in clinically unaffected twins and relatives of patients with PD. Three out of 6 monozygotic and 2 out of 3 dizygotic unaffected PD co-twins have shown reduced putamen 18F-dopa uptake to date. In addition, an intact sibling and a daughter of 1 of 4 siblings with PD both had low putamen 18F-dopa uptake. These preliminary findings suggest there may be a familial component to the etiology of PD. PET can also be used to detect underlying nigral pathology in patients with isolated tremor and patients who become rigid taking dopamine-receptor blocking agents (DRBAs). Patients with familial essential tremor have normal, and those with isolated rest tremor have consistently low, putamen 18F-dopa uptake. Drug-induced parkinsonism is infrequently associated with underlying nigral pathology.

Development of a high-affinity GABA uptake system in embryonic amphibian spinal neurons

High-affinity uptake systems for amino acid neurotransmitter precursors have been highly correlated with the use of the particular amino acid or its derivative as a transmitter. We have found interneurons in the Xenopus embryo spinal cord which accumulate GABA by a high-affinity uptake system. They originate near the end of gastrulation and their ability to accumulate GABA first appears at the early tail bud stage. By position and appearance they are comparable to some of the embryonic interneurons described by A. Roberts and J. D. W. Clarke (1982, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. B 296, 195–212). GABA-accumulating neurons also develop in dissociated cell cultures made from the presumptive spinal cord of neural plate stage Xenopus embryos. GABA accumulation in cultured neurons, as in cells in vivo, occurs via a high-affinity uptake system; GABA-accumulating cells have the same time of origin as the cells in vivo, and the ability to accumulate GABA in the population of cultured neurons appears at a time equivalent to that observed in intact sibling embryos. Thus it seems likely that the population of GABA-accumulating neurons developing in cell culture corresponds to the GABA-accumulating interneurons in vivo. The development of these neurons in dissociated cell cultures permits perturbation experiments that would be difficult to perform in vivo. We have examined the development of high-affinity GABA uptake in conditions that permit no electrical impulse activity in the cultures. The onset and extent of development of GABA accumulation in the neuronal population are normal under these conditions.