Bioluminescence Imaging as a Tool for Poxvirus Biology

Evaluation of Factors Affecting Hearing Aid Use in Children

Objective

The purpose of this study was to determine the factors affecting hearing aid use in children and investigate how these factors affected their subjective auditory performance.

Methods

The study was carried out with 34 children aged three to six years who had mild or moderate sensorineural hearing loss and had used a bilateral hearing aid for at least six months. The daily hearing aid usage times of children were collected with the help of data logging software. Parent-child interactions were assessed with the Maternal Behavior Rating Scale (MBRS) and Child Behavior Rating Scale (CBRS) scores. To assess the parents' levels of knowledge about hearing devices, the Hearing Aid Awareness Question Form for Parents, which was prepared by the researchers, was used. Finally, to evaluate the subjective hearing performance of the children, the Parents' Evaluation of Aural/Oral Performance of Children (PEACH) survey was implemented.

Results

Strong and significant correlations were found between the MBRS and CBRS scores, the results obtained from some questions in the Hearing Aid Awareness Question Form for Parents, the overall PEACH score, the QUIET subscale score, and the NOISE subscale score (p<0.001). According to the multivariate linear regression analyses, it was observed that the use of the pediatric clip hearing aids holder (question 17) had a significant effect in decreasing both the overall PEACH score (β=-3.07, p=0.008) and the PEACH-NOISE subscale score (β=-1.88, p=0.012). A unit increase in the score given to question 24 of the Hearing Aid Awareness Question Form for Parents (i.e., using the hearing aids longer) caused a 2.35-fold increase in the PEACH-NOISE subscale score, a 1.74-fold increase in the PEACH-QUIET subscale score, and a 4.06-fold increase in the overall PEACH score.

Conclusion

Parent-child interaction and parents' knowledge about hearing aid use are important factors affecting hearing aid use in children. These factors also affect the children's subjective auditory performance. Parents should be given detailed information about hearing aid use and be more sensitive and responsive in their interactions with their children.

The Opportunities and Use of Imaging to Measure Target Engagement

Lack of efficacy and poor safety outcomes are deemed to be the greatest causes of clinical failure of novel therapeutics. The use of biomarkers that give accurate information on target engagement, providing confidence that pharmacological activity in the target organ is being achieved, is key in optimizing clinical success. Without a measurement of target engagement, it can be very difficult to discern the basis for any lack of efficacy of a drug molecule within the pharmaceutical industry. Target engagement can be measured in both an in vitro and in vivo setting, and in recent years imaging measurements have been used frequently in drug discovery and development to assess target engagement and receptor occupancy in both human and animal models. From this perspective, we assess and look at the advancements in both in vivo and ex vivo imaging to demonstrate the enormous potential that imaging has as an application to provide a greater understanding of target engagement with a correlative therapeutic impact.