Player with Down Syndrome wins team $25,000 and a trip to New York

by Jonathan Oosting from MLive.com:
The Ishpeming High School football team, which capped an improbable run by winning the Division 7 state championship last weekend, isn't headed to Disney World.
Instead, the team is headed to New York City for the annual Sports Illustrated Sporstman of the Year ceremony.
The Hematites wouldn't be heading there without Eric Dompierre, a 19-year-old kicker with Down Syndrome who was almost kept off this year's team due to age limits set by the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
His father fought the inflexible rule all summer, and in August, the MHSAA finally approved a waiver allowing Eric to play this season as an extra-point specialist.
Sports Illustrated documented his inspirational story -- from the off-field drama to on-field bonds with teammates -- for its annual "underdogs" contest, allowing viewers to vote for his or other stories online.
Earlier this month, just days before they won a state championship, Ishpeming won the magazine contest, earning a trip to New York and a $25,000 grant.
Instead of flying 10 players to the December 5 awards ceremony, as originally planned, Sports Illustrated reportedly agreed to pay for a charter bus from the Upper Peninsula to New York so that the whole team can travel, and local boosters are raising additional funds for the full-team trip.
"The town has really behind this team and behind our efforts for Eric to play these last few years," Dean Dompierre told SI. "We needed signatures. We needed letters written and the town not only recruited other people from the state, but people around the country."
Eric's age-waiver wasn't the only adversity that the Hematites faced en route to their championship. Coach Jeff Olson lost his son to suicide over the summer, and the brother of starting quarterback Alex Briones died last year.
But Ishpeming overcame those hardships -- not to mention a size mismatch -- to defeate Detroit Loyola in the state championship. So much for "underdogs"

THS 'Special Opps' group receives another grant

by the Capital Journal:
Jack Hishmeh’s campaign to create a special room for special needs students at Topeka High School has received another financial boost.
The Topeka Active 20/30 Club has presented a $3,000 grant for the project through the Topeka Public Schools Foundation, school officials announced Friday.
Hishmeh is the Topeka High junior who initially developed lunchtime friendships with fellow students dealing with cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, then turned his interest into a campaign to convert the school’s special needs classroom into a more appealing place.
“His determination and extraordinary caring for others is leading the way to make this project a financial reality,” Pamela Johnson-Betts, executive director of the foundation, said of Hishmeh’s efforts.
After soliciting grants and other help for his project, Hishmeh and other THS students in his “Special Opps” group have begun a transformation of the special needs classroom Hishmeh once described as an upgraded storage room. His ultimate goal, after having completed a painting and wall-patching makeover this past summer, is to install new flooring, cabinets, furnishings and computers for the special needs students.
“I just had such a passion for the students in this classroom,” he said. “I felt like these kids deserved more than just a storage room.”
School officials say future contributions will help develop a kitchen area that will help special needs students develop life skills, as well as a lounge area to encourage the promotion of relationships through games and activities.
Lowe’s Home Improvement has been a major contributor in providing materials and human labor for the project. The Junior League of Topeka and Russ Ball Cabinets also have been active in the project, school officials said.

Lithium restores cognitive function in Down syndrome trial

by Paul Hamaker from the Examiner.com:
Researchers led by Laura Gasparini at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genova Italy are the first to report the restoration of cognitive functions in Down syndrome mice using lithium in the December 3, 2012, issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Lithium has been shown to be useful in the treatment of several mood disorders in humans and is particularly affective in the treatment of bipolar disorder.
Mice are used in human brain disease studies because mouse brain chemistry is very close to human brain chemistry.
The Down syndrome mice were tested in tasks measuring contextual learning, spatial memory, and object discrimination before and after being treated with lithium. The mice demonstrated a marked improvement in memory function after treatment with lithium.
Remarkably the Down syndrome mice also showed restored neurogenesis (regrowth and rebirth of nerve cells) in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is directly associated with learning and memory.
Not ready for humans yet, this first success implies a significant improvement in the treatment of Down syndrome using a drug that is known to be safe for most people.
The most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that considered cases of Down syndrome in Alabama indicate an increased number of Down syndrome births by 8.4 percent. No defined cause has been found for the increase.
The research was reviewed at the Eureka Alert website the date of publication.

Protesters want protection for Hillsborough students with special needs

By Marlene Sokol from the Tampa Bay Times:
TAMPA — With her 9-year-old son Anthony nearby, Theresa Mastella stood outside the Hillsborough County Children's Board headquarters on Thursday, waving a sign that said "Schools should be safe."
Anthony has Down syndrome and, like other parents, Mastella was moved by the news of two deaths this year of special-needs students in Hillsborough County.
"It just brings up all the issues that have been going on for years in the schools," said Mastella, who is active in a Down syndrome support group. "Unfortunately, it took two tragedies to bring it to light."
About 25 other protesters stood with her, including some children. Rhonda Ward, a volunteer advocate whose son has spina bifida, came all the way from Broward County.
Their issues ran the gamut from improved services in the Hillsborough district to state laws that would hold districts more accountable for serving disabled students.
"It's a systemic issue, it's not just here," Ward said. "They make everything as difficult as possible."
The Hillsborough district has a work group studying safety in the Exceptional Student Education program, which serves 29,000 students. Issues include staff training and protocols for moving students from one section of campus to another.
District spokesman Stephen Hegarty said of the protest, "This group is advocating for children and for ensuring the safety of children, and we are interested in all of those things as well. We are hard at work reviewing everything we do."
The district also is investigating the death of Jennifer Caballero, who drowned in a retention pond behind her middle school after wandering away from gym class.
Some of the parents Thursday said Caballero's death affected them on a personal level.
Diane Rodgers, whose 12-year-old son has Down syndrome, spoke highly of his teachers and aides.
But there was one morning when, at 4, her son wound up alone in the bus lane while teachers and aides were occupied. Rodgers said she had lingered at the school and discovered him, by sheer coincidence, before he wandered off.
"Everyone you talk to has a story," she said.
Samuel Felix, 18, said he was sickened by news of the two deaths. He has Asperger's syndrome and plans to take courses next year at St. Petersburg College.
"I believe that all of us were made equal on this earth and should be treated as equals," he said.
The protest coincided with the Children's Board's legislative summit, an event that brings community members together to discuss issues they wish to take to the Legislature.
Pam Iorio, the Children's Board's interim chief executive, said some of the protesters participated in the summit.

Prenatal intervention reduces learning deficit in mice

from Science Codex:
Mice with a condition that serves as a laboratory model for Down syndrome perform better on memory and learning tasks as adults if they were treated before birth with neuroprotective peptides, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health.
Down syndrome results when an individual receives an extra copy of chromosome 21. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Down syndrome occurs in 1 of every 691 births. Features of Down syndrome include delays in mental and physical development and poor muscle tone. These features may vary greatly, ranging from mild to severe.
The researchers studied growth factors that are important at certain key stages of brain development in the womb. Named for the first three amino acids making up their chemical sequence, NAP and SAL, are small peptides (small protein sub units) of two proteins. These two proteins enhance the ability of brain cells to receive and transmit signals, and enable them to survive. (NAP is an abbreviation for NAPVSIPQ and SALfor SALLRSIPA.)
The mice in the study had an extra copy of mouse chromosome 16, which has mouse counterparts to 55 percent of the genes on human chromosome 21.The researchers treated pregnant mice with NAP and SAL for five days, then tested the mouse offspring at 8 to 12 months of age, comparing them to mice treated with a saline solution (placebo). Mice with the extra chromosomal material that were treated with NAP and SAL in the womb learned as well as mice that did not have the extra chromosome, and significantly faster than mice with the extra chromosome that were treated with saline solution.
"Our study has provided important information that may help in the understanding of Down syndrome," said senior author Catherine Y. Spong, M.D., chief of the unit on perinatal and developmental neurobiology at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the NIH institute where the research was conducted.
Dr. Spong collaborated with first author Maddalena Incerti, M.D., Kari Horowitz MD, Robin Roberson, Daniel Abebe, Laura Toso, M.D., and Madeline Caballero, all of the NICHD Unit on Perinatal and Developmental Neurobiology. Dr. Incerti also is affiliated with the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, and Dr. Horowitz now is affiliated with the University of Connecticut, Farmington.
Their findings appear online in PLOS ONE.
In an earlier study, Dr. Spong and her colleagues found that, if treated with NAP and SAL in the womb, mice with the extra copy of chromosome 16, achieved developmental milestones earlier than did mice with an extra copy of chromosome 16 that had not been treated. In that study, the researchers examined developmental milestones for sensory, motor skill, and muscle tone development in the first three weeks of life.
"In our earlier work, we showed that treating the mice during pregnancy could prevent developmental delay as assessed with milestones," Dr. Spong said. "In this study, we showed that treatment with NAP and SAL not only puts the animals on a typical developmental trajectory, it also improves their ability to learn.
For the current study, pregnant mice received injections of the two protein fragments starting eight days after conception. This is equivalent to the end of the first trimester in a human pregnancy.
The researchers tested the learning skills of the mice when the animals reached adulthood. The mice were placed in a tank of water on a clear platform. The tank had symbols on each wall that the mice could use to orient themselves. Researchers then placed the mice directly in the water and timed how long it took them to locate the platform. With repeated trials, the mice become more adept at the task and take less time to reach the platform.
Over five days of testing, the researchers found that the time spent searching for the platform decreased substantially for all groups except the mice with the extra copy of chromosome 16 that were not treated with NAP and SAL in the womb.
The research of Dr. Spong's team is part of an NIH-wide focus on Down syndrome outlined in a 2007 Down syndrome research plan. The plan highlights research priorities for the field, including establishing a Down syndrome patient registry, which was announced Oct. 25, 2012.

Source: NIH/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development