I wanted to thank you again for your patronage of ONH Consulting- as always. Business has been relatively slow, but the customers I have worked with are keeping us very busy.

As a few of you may know already, we were able to attend this year’s convention of the MAGIC Foundation in Chicago in July 2010. My mother and I spent two days at this conference. We both had a chance to meet many people there- both parents and professionals. Dr. Borchert’s presentation on his ongoing research into the sleep disturbances many of us face was particularly informative. This workshop revolved around the results of a study just published in the “British Journal of Ophthalmology.” The study investigated the sleep wake cycles of nineteen participants of Dr. Borchert’s ongoing prospective study of children with ONH at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Dr. Borchert, Dr. Scott Rivkees from the Department of Ophthalmology at Yale University School of Medicine, and colleagues conducted the study.

The study examined the rhythmicity (regularity) of the sleep wake cycles of the nineteen participating children for which the researchers could obtain data. It concluded that 30% of study participants—six of the nineteen children in the study—demonstrated abnormal sleep wake cycles. Of these, all had severe visual impairment and cognitive delay. Four showed Hypoplastic (smaller than normal) Corpus Callosum, abnormal pupilary responsiveness was present in five participants, and multiple hormonal deficiencies were present in four participants. The full text of this article from the British Journal of Ophthalmology is available electronically by request from ONH Consulting.

In examining the results of this study—as well as many others related to children with ONH—it is important to understand that these results are based on a small number of children who participated in one study at the Division of Ophthalmology at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The state of research in general into the characteristics of children with ONH is also still at a very early stage. However, these results seem to parallel what some parents have been seeing in some of our children, and I hope it paves the way for further research into the sleep irregularities and other behaviors many of us demonstrate.

There are also studies in the works from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Great Ormond Street Hospital London on behavioral characteristics of children with ONH, particularly related to the numbers of children with ONH who qualify for an Autism Spectrum Diagnosis. Please stay tuned and feel free to contact ONH Consulting for further information about these exciting research efforts.

I thank you again for your support and patronage of ONH Consulting and look forward to continuing to work with you!

Sincerely,

Christopher Sabine

President

ONH Consulting, LLC