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Hearing aids can be effective devices to compensate for age- or non-age-related hearing losses. Their overall adoption in the affected population is still low, especially in underdeveloped countries in the subpopulation experiencing milder hearing loss. One of the major reasons for low adoption is the need for repeated complex fitting by professional audiologists, which is often not completed for various reasons. As a result, self-fitting procedures have been appearing as an alternative. Key open questions with these digital tools are linked to their effectiveness, utilized algorithms, and achievable end-results. A digital self-fitting prototype tool with a novel quick four-step fitting workflow was evaluated in a study on 19 individuals with moderate hearing loss. The tool was evaluated in a double-blinded, randomized study, having two study aims: comparing traditional audiological fitting with the new self-fitting tool, which can also be used as a remote tool. The main reported results show moderately high usability and user satisfaction obtained during self-fitting, and quasi-equivalence of the performance of the classical audiological fitting approach. The digital self-fitting tool enables multiple sessions and easy re-fitting, with the potential to outperform the classical fitting approach.

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Episodic head tremor anecdotally occurs in the Doberman pinscher dog breed, but it is not described in sufficient detail in the literature. We evaluated 87 Doberman pinschers affected with episodic head tremor and appropriate controls. The data analyzed were collected through detailed questionnaires, elaborate telephone interviews, and video recordings. Affected dogs underwent clinical, neurological, and laboratory examination, and a detailed diagnostic workup was conducted in 5 affected dogs. Pedigrees of affected dogs were collected and reviewed. The affected dogs expressed individual phenotypes of either horizontal or vertical head movements, but rarely did a dog exhibit head movements in both directions. There was considerable variation in duration (10 seconds to 3 hours; median: 3 minutes), frequency of occurrence (1-20 episodes/day; median: 2/day) of head tremor and length of the period without head tremor (1-1,800 days; median: 60 days). Subtle dystonic posturing of the head and neck during head tremor was evident on video recordings of 5 dogs. Certain exceptional conditions such as illness, surgery, some medications, heat, pseudopregnancy, or pregnancy triggered episodes. Two main important forms of episodic head tremor were identified: a familial early-onset form (age < 1 year) that affected littermates and a sporadic form. Affected dogs were traced back to 1 common sire, also including sporadic cases. Episodic head tremor is an inherited, paroxysmal movement disorder that affects the Doberman pinscher breed. Identification of the causative genes in the future will allow us to obtain a more detailed description of the syndrome.

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The Borderline Symptom List (BSL-95) has initially been developed as a self-rating instrument for specific assessment of borderline-typical symptoms. In order to reduce patient burden and assessment time we developed a short-version of the BSL. Twenty-three of the original 95 BSL-items were included into the short-version (BSL-23). The evaluation was based on five different samples with borderline patients (n=694). The internal consistency of the BSL-23 was high: Cronbach's alpha: 0.94-0.97. The remaining results regarding test-retest-reliability, validity, ability to discriminate between patient groups and sensitivity for change according to therapy were very satisfactory throughout. The results indicate that the BSL-23 is an efficient and convenient self-rating instrument that displays very good psychometric properties comparable to those of the full version of the BSL.

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BACKGROUND: The full version of the Borderline Symptom List (BSL; for clarification now labeled BSL-95) is a self-rating instrument for specific assessment of borderline-typical symptomatology. The BSL-95 items are based on criteria of the DSM-IV, the revised version of the Diagnostic Interview for Borderline Personality Disorder, and the opinions of both clinical experts and borderline patients. The BSL-95 includes 95 items. In order to reduce patient burden and assessment time, a short version with 23 items (BSL-23) was developed. METHODS: The development of the BSL-23 was based on a sample of 379 borderline patients, considering the items from the BSL-95 that had the highest levels of sensitivity to change and the highest ability to discriminate borderline patients from other patient groups. In a second step, the psychometric properties of the BSL-23 were investigated and compared with the psychometric properties of the BSL-95 in 5 different samples, including a total of 659 borderline patients. RESULTS: In all of the samples, a high correlation of the sum score was found between the BSL-23 and the BSL-95 (range: 0.958-0.963). The internal consistency was high for both versions (BSL-23/Cronbach's alpha: 0.935-0.969; BSL-95/Cronbach's alpha: 0.977-0.978). Both BSL-23 and BSL-95 clearly discriminated borderline personality disorder patients from patients with an axis I diagnosis (mean effect sizes were 1.13 and 0.96 for the BSL-23 and BSL-95, respectively). In addition, comparisons before and after 3 months of dialectical behavior therapy revealed a numerically larger effect size for the BSL-23 (d = 0.47) compared to the BSL-95 (d = 0.38). CONCLUSION: The results indicate that the BSL-23 is an efficient and convenient self-rating instrument that displays good psychometric properties comparable to those of the BSL-95. The BSL-23 also demonstrated sensitivity to the effects of therapy.

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A decade after the first description of IL-2-deficient mice, the redundancy of IL-2 as a T cell growth factor is well accepted and the focus of research has shifted to the unexpected multiorgan autoimmunity and inflammation observed in mice lacking components of the IL-2/IL-2R system. So far, a set of defects at the levels of repertoire selection, the generation of suppressive regulatory T cells, T cell homing and clonal contraction via activation induced cell death (AICD) have been documented. We propose that these individual defects jointly contribute to the severe disturbance of T cell homeostasis and self-tolerance underlying the immunopathology of the IL-2 deficiency syndrome.

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