title: Study of clinical characteristics in young subjects with Developmental coordination disorder.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a chronic neurological disorder observed in children. DCD is characterized by slowness in activities and motor impairment that affects the children's daily living and academic achievements, and later their professional and social behavior. Our aim in this work was to report characteristics frequencies in a group of children with DCD and to propose a subtyping of DCD characteristics.
  
  
  METHODS
  Thirty three clinical DCD characteristics, the mostly reported in the literature, were assessed in 129 patients, boys and girls aged from 4years to 18years, and their subtyping was proposed. The statistical analyses were carried out with the Chi square, the t-test and the correlation for the statistical differences, and with the Ward clustering method for subtyping.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found that there were 3.17 boys for one girl, all patients were characterized as slow, 47% were left-handers or ambidextrous, 36% and 26% had orofacial and verbal dyspraxia, respectively, 83% were found anxious, and 84% were described as being clumsy.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  It appears from these results that a child with DCD expresses more than a single difficulty. Three subtypes emerged from the statistical analysis in this study: (1) clumsiness and other characteristics except language difficulties; (2) self-esteem and peer relation without clumsiness and language difficulties; (3) language difficulties and orofacial dyspraxia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine and Radiobiology, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada; Department of Pediatrics, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada.
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Farmer
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine and Radiobiology, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada; Service de Neurologie Pédiatrique, Université de Montpellier I, Montpellier, France.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Echenne
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine and Radiobiology, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada. Electronic address: mhamed.bentourkia@usherbrooke.ca.
authors.forename: M'hamed
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bentourkia
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001072:Apraxias / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000469:parasitology / Q000503:physiopathology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D019957:Motor Skills Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D010379:Peer Group; D012649:Self Concept
keywords: Brain development; Developmental Coordination Disorder; Dyspraxia; Neurological disorders