The Overview of Down Syndrome Disease
Cause of Down syndrome is genetics. Any genetic disorder in chromosomes may emerge during pregnancy. This can be observed even if the family has no history of Down syndrome before. As an example, an ordinary mother may have a baby with Down syndrome with a chance of 1/1500. However, current researches are not enough to understand the cause of this chromosome disorder, its causes and how to prevent it. Despite the tools to prevent Down syndrome is absent right now, researches on paving the way for them to join the society are various. Decreasing Down syndrome’s negative effects on early childhood is especially important among these researches because with proper approach to child and with good, individual based special education can curb the difficulties of being a member of exceptionals with fragile physical and mental conditions. One good example of these studies is treadmill intervention research of Angulo-Barroso, Burghardt, Lloyd and Ulrich (2008) that suggest high intensity physical exercise for good development of motor functions. With this special exercise during their preschool education, infants with Down syndrome can be physically more active, can prevent hypotonia and can have more stable and balanced walking onset. As a second good example of special care intervention programs, Hernandez-Reif, Field, Largie, Mora, Bornstein and Waldman (2006) made a study to measure whether massage therapy has a positive effect on muscle toning and motor functions of children with Down syndrome. These important studies and their counterparts enable us to create a good early education format for children with exceptionalities and help to reduce what people with Down syndrome should fight with.
Angulo-Barroso et al. (2008) investigated whether infants with Down syndrome can develop better motor functions via high intensity physical activity of treadmill. Although the title of this work understates the scope of the work by underlining only the treadmill intervention, the research is not limited to the effects of treadmill activity. The research analyzes the results of high intensity training and generalized training protocol on short- and long-term physical activities of infants with Down syndrome.
Thirty infants were chosen from local parent organization took part in this research. The criteria of enrollment were being able to take at least six steps on the treadmill in one moment. 16 of these infants were randomly chosen for high intensity treadmill training (HI) and the rest, 14 infants, enrolled to low intensity treadmill (LG). Infants were observed for five minutes in every two weeks and their muscle measures and weight were all measured in same intervals. Following this, these infants were monitored for 24 hours, the logs were kept recording their physical activities and these activities also measured through Actiwatch devices on the infants’ ankles and chests. When an infant starts to walk independently (determined as taking three sequential steps and named as being on a walking onset) this indicates the end of this monitoring and research for him. Finally, attendants enroll in a walking experience test by going back to laboratory, approximately once in every three months, to enable the researchers to assess long-term effects of high intensity treadmill exercises.
The results were evaluated (at least one of the evaluation aspects) as Highact and Lowact according to the movement thresholds. For instance, when an infant with Down syndrome is measured to determine his/her movement duration and movement magnitude, if the threshold for the magnitude is 5, his physical activity below this average is labelled as Lowact and above this threshold is Highact. However, in terms of analysis of the results, this research is multidimensional. Researchers calculated trunk Highact and Lowact, separately for duration and magnitude and did the same thing for leg movement. As a result of all calculations, they reached data, which enables them to interpret whether the motor functions and level of physical activity of the infants with Down syndrome are affected positively by high intensity treadmill exercise, particularly in the short-run. Another indicator of multidimensionality is a similar observation and calculation to assess the effects in long-run, as it is mentioned above, after the infant accomplished his/her walking onset. In this phase, by using similar indicators and named the phase as post-intervention, the researchers tried to understand the effects of high intensity treadmill exercises to independent walking.
At the end of all these complex multidimensional web of examinations, high intensity treadmill exercise has a strong positive effect to infants with Down syndrome, in terms of their increased rate of physical activity and muscle growth. They passed more time to Highact during the measurements and they did not tend to pass time in Lowact, both in terms of magnitude and duration. As a second finding, independent walking data showed infant group of high intensity was better in walking independently in the post-intervention phase. However, statistics revealed a slight difference with the group of infants in low intensity treadmill, so it would not be true to speak of a substantial or easily noticeable effect of high intensity treadmill in the long-run, except the general tendency of being more active.
The third finding, and the most important one according to aim of researchers at the beginning of this study, this high intensity treadmill exercise can prevent late development of motor functions which can because any kind of disability or exceptionality. Hence, as the utmost question of this research, along with other advantages of high intensity treadmill, it helps to develop motor function progress of infants with Down syndrome, especially compared with the ones who have same exceptionalities and who have only enrolled in general physical activity routine.
In the second article, Hernandez-Reif et al. (2006) investigated the same exceptionality, namely Down syndrome, but with a different research question as whether massage therapy has positive effects on muscke toning and motor functions of the infants with Down syndrome. In detail, by adding massage therapy and reading (separately) to infants’ general education scheme, researchers try to compare two groups to understand differences and advantages of massage therapy, in comparison with a reading group. Twenty-one preschool children were recruited for the study by having consent from their families and by keeping factors other than preschool education fixed for all students, including area of play or educational background of the counselors of this study. Criteria of recruitment for these children is absence of any physical or emotional impairment, again to stabilize the variables for all children. These children were randomly split up into two groups as massage therapy and reading groups. In massage therapy group, children will have half an hour massage by a professional therapist and in reading group, a counselor will read Dr. Seuss books for half an hour. Two activities were done once a week for two months. As one in the beginning of two months and one after, two measurements will be done to see the effects of these activities in comparison. By this way, the effects of massage therapy could be seen, which was chosen because of being a physical way of treatment (like treadmill) but with lower or no demand of physical efforts from children with Down syndrome, since this physical demand might end up with injuries for them. Unlike the article of Angulo-Barroso et al. (2008), the evaluation process of results is not multidimensional.
Hernandez-Reif et al. (2006) determined some scientific parameters such as Development Profile for Infants and Young Children (DPIYC) and Arms, Legs and Trunk Muscle Tone Score (ALT), which makes the research consist of different measurement procedures, rather than being multidimensional (like Highact, lowact, duration, magnitude, short or long-run). DPIYC is a test which includes social, cognitive, motor functions-related and language-based areas, to analyze strengths and weaknesses of the children. It can be accomplished approximately in an hour, and in this research, the infants attended twice to this test, one in the beginning of the research and one at the end of two months period. DPIYC gives a number between 12 to 15, which symbolizes the developmental age in months of the attendant infants. So, the best performance would be a 15 and the worst would be 12 months od developmental age. The ALT, on the other hand, is a more muscle-based assessment. Two researchers of this study developed ALT before the beginning of this research to measure slightest muscle toning changes by measuring arms, legs and trunk separately. At the end of DPIYC, the massage therapy group resulted as good developmental age in motor function and good language comprehension, while in ALT the massage therapy group is still developing in terms of arms and legs muscle toning progress.
When it comes to solid findings at the end of this research, although hypotonia, or decreased muscle toning can be seen in infants with Down syndrome, the researchers found out that development in muscle toning and motor functions are observable in massage therapy group. Even this was the most important and target answer of this study, there is also one other finding that requires further research on the area. A noticeable social and language development in both massage therapy group and in the reading group as well. This would bring changes or reforms to early intervention programs for down syndrome, as well as other similar kinds of exceptionalities. Thus, by contributing two substantial results to the literature of Down syndrome early intervention exercises, the research is finalized and scientifically proved the positive effects of massage therapy for children with exceptionalities.
