Tag Archive for: low birth weight

Marva Moxey Mims

Making the case for a comprehensive national registry for pediatric CKD

Marva Moxey Mims

“It’s of utmost importance that we develop more sensitive ways to identify children who are at heightened risk for developing CKD.,” says Marva Moxey-Mims, M.D. “A growing body of evidence suggests that this includes children treated in pediatric intensive care units who sustained acute kidney injury, infants born preterm and low birth weight, and obese children.”

Even though chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global epidemic that imperils cardiovascular health, impairs quality of life and heightens mortality, very little is known about how CKD uniquely impacts children and how kids may be spared from its more devastating effects.

That makes a study published in the November 2018 issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases all the more notable because it represents the largest population-based study of CKD prevalence in a nationally representative cohort of adolescents aged 12 to 18, Sun-Young Ahn, M.D., and Marva Moxey-Mims, M.D., of Children’s National Health System, write in a companion editorial published online Oct. 18, 2018.

In their invited commentary, “Chronic kidney disease in children: the importance of a national epidemiological study,” Drs. Ahn and Moxey-Mims point out that pediatric CKD can contribute to growth failure, developmental and neurocognitive defects and impaired cardiovascular health.

“Children who require renal-replacement therapy suffer mortality rates that are 30 times higher than children who don’t have end-stage renal disease,” adds Dr. Moxey-Mims, chief of the Division of Nephrology at Children’s National. “It’s of utmost importance that we develop more sensitive ways to identify children who are at heightened risk for developing CKD. A growing body of evidence suggests that this includes children treated in pediatric intensive care units who sustained acute kidney injury, infants born preterm and low birth weight, and obese children.”

At its early stages, pediatric CKD usually has few symptoms, and clinicians around the world lack validated biomarkers to spot the disease early, before it may become irreversible.

While national mass urine screening programs in Japan, Taiwan and Korea have demonstrated success in early detection of CKD, which enabled successful interventions, such an approach is not cost-effective for the U.S., Drs. Ahn and Moxey-Mims write.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 10 U.S. infants in 2016 was born preterm, prior to 37 weeks gestation. Because of that trend, the commentators advocate for “a concerted national effort” to track preterm and low birth weight newborns. (These infants are presumed to have lower nephron endowment, which increases their risk for developing end-stage kidney disease.)

“We need a comprehensive, national registry just for pediatric CKD, a database that represents the entire U.S. population that we could query to glean new insights about what improves kids’ lifespan and quality of life. With a large database of anonymized pediatric patient records we could, for example, assess the effectiveness of specific therapeutic interventions, such as angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, in improving care and slowing CKD progression in kids,” Dr. Moxey-Mims adds.

Breastfeeding Mom

Breast milk helps white matter in preemies

Breastfeeding Mom

Critical white matter structures in the brains of babies born prematurely at low birth weight develop more robustly when their mothers breast-feed them, compared with preemies fed formula.

Breast-feeding offers a slew of benefits to infants, including protection against common childhood infections and potentially reducing the risk of chronic health conditions such as asthma, obesity and type 2 diabetes. These benefits are especially important for infants born prematurely, or before 37 weeks gestation – a condition that affects 1 in 10 babies born in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prematurely born infants are particularly vulnerable to infections and other health problems.

Along with the challenges premature infants face, there is a heightened risk for neurodevelopmental disabilities that often do not fully emerge until the children enter school. A new study by Children’s National Health System researchers shows that breast-feeding might help with this problem. The findings, presented at the 2017 annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies, show that critical white matter structures in the brains of babies born so early that they weigh less than 1,500 grams develop more robustly when their mothers breast-feed them, compared with preemie peers who are fed formula.

The Children’s National research team used sophisticated imaging tools to examine brain development in very low birth weight preemies, who weighed about 3 pounds at birth.

They enrolled 37 babies who were no more than 32 weeks gestational age at birth and were admitted to Children’s neonatal intensive care unit within the first 48 hours of life. Twenty-two of the preemies received formula specifically designed to meet the nutritional needs of infants born preterm, while 15 infants were fed breast milk. The researchers leveraged diffusion tensor imaging – which measures organization of the developing white matter of the brain – and 3-D volumetric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to calculate brain volume by region, structure and tissue type, such as cortical gray matter, white matter, deep gray matter and cerebellum.

“We did not find significant differences in the global and regional brain volumes when we conducted MRIs at 40 weeks gestation in both groups of prematurely born infants,” says Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D., director of the Developing Brain Research Laboratory and senior author of the paper. “There are striking differences in white matter microstructural organization, however, with greater fractional anisotropy in the left posterior limb of internal capsule and middle cerebellar peduncle, and lower mean diffusivity in the superior cerebellar peduncle.”

White matter lies under the gray matter cortex, makes up about half of the brain’s volume, and is a critical player in human development as well as in neurological disorders. The increased white matter microstructural organization in the cerebral and cerebellar white matter suggests more robust fiber tracts and microarchitecture of the developing white matter which may predict better neurologic outcomes in preterm infants. These critical structures that begin to form in the womb are used for the rest of the person’s life when, for instance, they attempt to master a new skill.

“Previous research has linked early breast milk feeding with increased volumetric brain growth and improved cognitive and behavioral outcomes,” she says. “These very vulnerable preemies already experience a high incidence rate of neurocognitive dysfunction – even if they do not have detectable structural brain injury. Providing them with breast milk early in life holds the potential to lessen those risks.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics endorses breast-feeding because it lowers infants’ chances of suffering from ear infections and diarrhea in the near term and decreases their risks of being obese as children. Limperopoulos says additional studies are needed in a larger group of patients as well as longer-term follow up as growing infants babble, scamper and color to gauge whether there are differences in motor skills, cognition and writing ability between the two groups.