Katie Donnelly

Firearm injuries disproportionately affect African American kids in DC Wards 7 and 8

Katie Donnelly

“Because the majority of patients in our analyses were injured through accidental shootings, this particular risk factor can help to inform policy makers about possible interventions to prevent future firearm injury, disability and death,” says Katie Donnelly, M.D.

Firearm injuries disproportionately impact African American young men living in Washington’s Wards 7 and 8 compared with other city wards, with nearly one-quarter of injuries suffered in the injured child’s home or at a friend’s home, according to a hot spot analysis presented during the Pediatric Academic Societies 2019 Annual Meeting.

“We analyzed the addresses where youths were injured by firearms over a nearly 12-year period and found that about 60 percent of these shootings occurred in Ward 7 or Ward 8, lower socioeconomic neighborhoods when compared with Washington’s six other Wards,” says Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE, assistant chief of Children’s Division of Emergency Medicine and Trauma Services and the study’s senior author. “This granular detail will help to target resources and interventions to more effectively reduce firearm-related injury and death.”

In the retrospective, cross-sectional study, the Children’s research team looked at all children aged 18 and younger who were treated at Children’s National for firearm-related injuries from Jan. 1, 2006, to May 31, 2017. During that time, 122 children injured by firearms in Washington were treated at Children’s National, the only Level 1 pediatric trauma center in the nation’s Capitol:

  • Nearly 64 percent of these firearm-related injuries were accidental
  • The patients’ mean age was 12.9 years old
  • More than 94 percent of patients were African American and
  • Nearly 74 percent were male.

Of all injuries suffered by children, injuries due to firearms carry the highest mortality rates, the study authors write. About 3 percent of patients in Children’s study died from their firearm-related injuries. Among surviving youth:

  • Patients had a mean Injury Severity Score of 5.8. (The score for a “major trauma” is greater than 15.)
  • 54 percent required hospitalization, with a mean hospitalization of three days
  • Nearly 28 percent required surgery, with 14.8 percent transferred directly from the emergency department to the operating room and
  • Nearly 16 percent were admitted to the intensive care unit.

“Regrettably, firearm injuries remain a major public health hazard for our nation’s children and young adults,” adds Katie Donnelly, M.D., emergency medicine specialist and the study’s lead author. “Because the majority of patients in our analyses were injured through accidental shootings, this particular risk factor can help to inform policy makers about possible interventions to prevent future firearm injury, disability and death.”

Pediatric Academic Societies 2019 Annual Meeting poster presentatio

  • “Pediatric firearm-related injuries and outcomes in the District of Columbia.”
    • Monday, April 29, 2019, 5:45 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (EST)

Katie Donnelly, M.D., emergency medicine specialist and lead author; Shilpa J. Patel, M.D., MPH, emergency medicine specialist and co-author; Gia M. Badolato, co-author; James Jackson, co-author; and Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE, assistant chief of Children’s Division of Emergency Medicine and Trauma Services and senior author.

Other Children’s research related to firearms presented during PAS 2019 includes:

April 27, 8 a.m.: “Protect kids, not guns: What pediatric providers can do to improve firearm safety.” Gabriella Azzarone, Asad Bandealy, M.D.; Priti Bhansali, M.D.; Eric Fleegler; Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE;  Alex Hogan; Sabah Iqbal; Kavita Parikh, M.D.; Shilpa J. Patel, M.D., MPH; Noe Romo; and Alyssa Silver.

April 29, 5:45 p.m.: “Emergency department visits for pediatric firearm-related injury: By intent of injury.” Shilpa J. Patel, M.D., MPH; Gia M. Badolato; Kavita Parikh, M.D.; Sabah Iqbal; and Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE.

April 29, 5:45 p.m.: “Assessing the intentionality of pediatric firearm injuries using ICD codes.” Katie Donnelly, M.D.; Gia M. Badolato; James Chamberlain, M.D.; and Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE.

April 30, 9:45 a.m.: “Defining a research agenda for the field of pediatric firearm injury prevention.” Libby Alpern; Patrick Carter; Rebecca Cunningham, Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE; Fred Rivara; and Eric Sigel.

Billie Lou Short and Kurt Newman at Research and Education Week

Research and Education Week honors innovative science

Billie Lou Short and Kurt Newman at Research and Education Week

Billie Lou Short, M.D., received the Ninth Annual Mentorship Award in Clinical Science.

People joke that Billie Lou Short, M.D., chief of Children’s Division of Neonatology, invented extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, known as ECMO for short. While Dr. Short did not invent ECMO, under her leadership Children’s National was the first pediatric hospital to use it. And over decades Children’s staff have perfected its use to save the lives of tiny, vulnerable newborns by temporarily taking over for their struggling hearts and lungs. For two consecutive years, Children’s neonatal intensive care unit has been named the nation’s No. 1 for newborns by U.S. News & World Report. “Despite all of these accomplishments, Dr. Short’s best legacy is what she has done as a mentor to countless trainees, nurses and faculty she’s touched during their careers. She touches every type of clinical staff member who has come through our neonatal intensive care unit,” says An Massaro, M.D., director of residency research.

For these achievements, Dr. Short received the Ninth Annual Mentorship Award in Clinical Science.

Anna Penn, M.D., Ph.D., has provided new insights into the central role that the placental hormone allopregnanolone plays in orderly fetal brain development, and her research team has created novel experimental models that mimic some of the brain injuries often seen in very preterm babies – an essential step that informs future neuroprotective strategies. Dr. Penn, a clinical neonatologist and developmental neuroscientist, “has been a primary adviser for 40 mentees throughout their careers and embodies Children’s core values of Compassion, Commitment and Connection,” says Claire-Marie Vacher, Ph.D.

For these achievements, Dr. Penn was selected to receive the Ninth Annual Mentorship Award in Basic and Translational Science.

The mentorship awards for Drs. Short and Penn were among dozens of honors given in conjunction with “Frontiers in Innovation,” the Ninth Annual Research and Education Week (REW) at Children’s National. In addition to seven keynote lectures, more than 350 posters were submitted from researchers – from high-school students to full-time faculty – about basic and translational science, clinical research, community-based research, education, training and quality improvement; five poster presenters were showcased via Facebook Live events hosted by Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Two faculty members won twice: Vicki Freedenberg, Ph.D., APRN, for research about mindfulness-based stress reduction and Adeline (Wei Li) Koay, MBBS, MSc, for research related to HIV. So many women at every stage of their research careers took to the stage to accept honors that Naomi L.C. Luban, M.D., Vice Chair of Academic Affairs, quipped that “this day is power to women.”

Here are the 2019 REW award winners:

2019 Elda Y. Arce Teaching Scholars Award
Barbara Jantausch, M.D.
Lowell Frank, M.D.

Suzanne Feetham, Ph.D., FAA, Nursing Research Support Award
Vicki Freedenberg, Ph.D., APRN, for “Psychosocial and biological effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention in adolescents with CHD/CIEDs: a randomized control trial”
Renee’ Roberts Turner for “Peak and nadir experiences of mid-level nurse leaders”

2019-2020 Global Health Initiative Exploration in Global Health Awards
Nathalie Quion, M.D., for “Latino youth and families need assessment,” conducted in Washington
Sonia Voleti for “Handheld ultrasound machine task shifting,” conducted in Micronesia
Tania Ahluwalia, M.D., for “Simulation curriculum for emergency medicine,” conducted in India
Yvonne Yui for “Designated resuscitation teams in NICUs,” conducted in Ghana
Xiaoyan Song, Ph.D., MBBS, MSc, “Prevention of hospital-onset infections in PICUs,” conducted in China

Ninth Annual Research and Education Week Poster Session Awards

Basic and Translational Science
Faculty: Adeline (Wei Li) Koay, MBBS, MSc, for “Differences in the gut microbiome of HIV-infected versus HIV-exposed, uninfected infants”
Faculty: Hayk Barseghyan, Ph.D., for “Composite de novo Armenian human genome assembly and haplotyping via optical mapping and ultra-long read sequencing”
Staff: Damon K. McCullough, BS, for “Brain slicer: 3D-printed tissue processing tool for pediatric neuroscience research”
Staff: Antonio R. Porras, Ph.D., for “Integrated deep-learning method for genetic syndrome screening using facial photographs”
Post docs/fellows/residents: Lung Lau, M.D., for “A novel, sprayable and bio-absorbable sealant for wound dressings”
Post docs/fellows/residents: Kelsey F. Sugrue, Ph.D., for “HECTD1 is required for growth of the myocardium secondary to placental insufficiency”
Graduate students: Erin R. Bonner, BA, for “Comprehensive mutation profiling of pediatric diffuse midline gliomas using liquid biopsy”
High school/undergraduate students: Ali Sarhan for “Parental somato-gonadal mosaic genetic variants are a source of recurrent risk for de novo disorders and parental health concerns: a systematic review of the literature and meta-analysis”

Clinical Research
Faculty: Amy Hont, M.D., for “Ex vivo expanded multi-tumor antigen specific T-cells for the treatment of solid tumors”
Faculty: Lauren McLaughlin, M.D., for “EBV/LMP-specific T-cells maintain remissions of T- and B-cell EBV lymphomas after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation”

Staff: Iman A. Abdikarim, BA, for “Timing of allergenic food introduction among African American and Caucasian children with food allergy in the FORWARD study”
Staff: Gelina M. Sani, BS, for “Quantifying hematopoietic stem cells towards in utero gene therapy for treatment of sickle cell disease in fetal cord blood”
Post docs/fellows/residents: Amy H. Jones, M.D., for “To trach or not trach: exploration of parental conflict, regret and impacts on quality of life in tracheostomy decision-making”
Graduate students: Alyssa Dewyer, BS, for “Telemedicine support of cardiac care in Northern Uganda: leveraging hand-held echocardiography and task-shifting”
Graduate students: Natalie Pudalov, BA, “Cortical thickness asymmetries in MRI-abnormal pediatric epilepsy patients: a potential metric for surgery outcome”
High school/undergraduate students: Kia Yoshinaga for “Time to rhythm detection during pediatric cardiac arrest in a pediatric emergency department”

Community-Based Research
Faculty: Adeline (Wei Li) Koay, MBBS, MSc, for “Recent trends in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area”
Staff: Gia M. Badolato, MPH, for “STI screening in an urban ED based on chief complaint”
Post docs/fellows/residents: Christina P. Ho, M.D., for “Pediatric urinary tract infection resistance patterns in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area”
Graduate students: Noushine Sadeghi, BS, “Racial/ethnic disparities in receipt of sexual health services among adolescent females”

Education, Training and Program Development
Faculty: Cara Lichtenstein, M.D., MPH, for “Using a community bus trip to increase knowledge of health disparities”
Staff: Iana Y. Clarence, MPH, for “TEACHing residents to address child poverty: an innovative multimodal curriculum”
Post docs/fellows/residents: Johanna Kaufman, M.D., for “Inpatient consultation in pediatrics: a learning tool to improve communication”
High school/undergraduate students: Brett E. Pearson for “Analysis of unanticipated problems in CNMC human subjects research studies and implications for process improvement”

Quality and Performance Improvement
Faculty: Vicki Freedenberg, Ph.D., APRN, for “Implementing a mindfulness-based stress reduction curriculum in a congenital heart disease program”
Staff: Caleb Griffith, MPH, for “Assessing the sustainability of point-of-care HIV screening of adolescents in pediatric emergency departments”
Post docs/fellows/residents: Rebecca S. Zee, M.D., Ph.D., for “Implementation of the Accelerated Care of Torsion (ACT) pathway: a quality improvement initiative for testicular torsion”
Graduate students: Alysia Wiener, BS, for “Latency period in image-guided needle bone biopsy in children: a single center experience”

View images from the REW2019 award ceremony.

Beth Tarini

Getting to know SPR’s future President, Beth Tarini, M.D., MS

Beth Tarini

Quick. Name four pillar pediatric organizations on the vanguard of advancing pediatric research.

Most researchers and clinicians can rattle off the names of the Academic Pediatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Pediatric Society. But that fourth one, the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR), is a little trickier. While many know SPR, a lot of research-clinicians simply do not.

Over the next few years, Beth A. Tarini, M.D., MS, will make it her personal mission to ensure that more pediatric researchers get to know SPR and are so excited about the organization that they become active members. In May 2019 Dr. Tarini becomes Vice President of the society that aims to stitch together an international network of interdisciplinary researchers to improve kids’ health. Four-year SPR leadership terms begin with Vice President before transitioning to President-Elect, President and Past-President, each for one year.

Dr. Tarini says she looks forward to working with other SPR leaders to find ways to build more productive, collaborative professional networks among faculty, especially emerging junior faculty. “Facilitating ways to network for research and professional reasons across pediatric research is vital – albeit easier said than done. I have been told I’m a connector, so I hope to leverage that skill in this new role,” says Dr. Tarini, associate director for Children’s Center for Translational Research.

“I’m delighted that Dr. Tarini was elected to this leadership position, and I am impressed by her vision of improving SPR’s outreach efforts,” says Mark Batshaw, M.D., Executive Vice President, Chief Academic Officer and Physician-in-Chief at Children’s National. “Her goal of engaging potential members in networking through a variety of ways – face-to-face as well as leveraging digital platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – and her focus on engaging junior faculty will help strengthen SPR membership in the near term and long term.”

Dr. Tarini adds: “Success to me would be leaving after four years with more faculty – especially junior faculty – approaching membership in SPR with the knowledge and enthusiasm that they bring to membership in other pediatric societies.”

SPR requires that its members not simply conduct research, but move the needle in their chosen discipline. In her research, Dr. Tarini has focused on ensuring that population-based newborn screening programs function efficiently and effectively with fewer hiccups at any place along the process.

Thanks to a heel stick to draw blood, an oxygen measurement, and a hearing test, U.S. babies are screened for select inherited health conditions, expediting treatment for infants and reducing the chances they’ll experience long-term health consequences.

“The complexity of this program that is able to test nearly all 4 million babies in the U.S. each year is nothing short of astounding. You have to know the child is born – anywhere in the state – and then between 24 and 48 hours of birth you have to do testing onsite, obtain a specific type of blood sample, send the blood sample to an off-site lab quickly, test the sample, find the child if the test is out of range, get the child evaluated and tested for the condition, then send them for treatment. Given the time pressures as well as the coordination of numerous people and organizations, the fact that this happens routinely is amazing. And like any complex process, there is always room for improvement,” she says.

Dr. Tarini’s research efforts have focused on those process improvements.

As just one example, the Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children, a federal advisory committee on which she serves, was discussing how to eliminate delays in specimen processing to provide speedier results to families. One possible solution floated was to open labs all seven days, rather than just five days a week. Dr. Tarini advocated for partnering with health care engineers who could help model ways to make the specimen transport process more efficient, just like airlines and mail delivery services. A more efficient and effective solution was to match the specimen pick-up and delivery times more closely with the lab’s operational times – which maximizes lab resources and shortens wait times for parents.

Conceptual modeling comes so easily for her that she often leaps out of her seat mid-sentence, underscoring a point by jotting thoughts on a white board, doing it so often that her pens have run dry.

“It’s like a bus schedule: You want to find a bus that not only takes you to your destination but gets you there on time,” she says.

Dr. Tarini’s current observational study looks for opportunities to improve how parents in Minnesota and Iowa are given out-of-range newborn screening test results – especially false positives – and how that experience might shake their confidence in their child’s health as well as heighten their own stress level.

“After a false positive test result, are there parents who walk away from newborn screening with lingering stress about their child’s health? Can we predict who those parents might be and help them?” she asks.

Among the challenges is the newborn screening occurs so quickly after delivery that some emotionally and physically exhausted parents may not remember it was done. Then they get a call from the state with ominous results. Another challenge is standardizing communication approaches across dozens of birthing centers and hospitals.

“We know parents are concerned after receiving a false positive result, and some worry their infant remains vulnerable,” she says. “Can we change how we communicate – not just what we say, but how we say it – to alleviate those concerns?”

young girl sitting on a bed with a cast

Creating better casts

young girl sitting on a bed with a cast

Each year, millions of children in the U.S. come to hospital emergency departments with fractures. While broken bones are commonplace, the expertise to stabilize these injuries and cast them is not, says Children’s National Health System orthopedic surgeon Shannon Kelly, M.D.

Most fractures are casted by an on-call resident without the assistance of an orthopedist, she explains. Whether that resident applies a cast successfully depends largely on how well he or she learned this skill as an intern. While most current training models have interns take calls with residents, picking up casting skills through hands-on experience from their more senior peers, they can also pick up mistakes – which get repeated once they’re caring for patients independently as residents themselves, Kelly says.

Casting mistakes aren’t trivial, she adds. They can have serious consequences for patients. For example, a cast that’s not tight enough in the right places can leave bones vulnerable to shifting, a scenario that doctors call a loss in reduction, Kelly explains. If bones aren’t in the right position to heal, doctors must reposition them either in the operating room, often exposing patients to general anesthesia, or through painful, in-office procedures.

Conversely, casts that are too tight – particularly on a fresh fracture that’s prone to swelling – can damage tissues from loss of circulation. To avoid this latter problem, doctors often create a “bivalve” cast in which the two halves are split like a clamshell, leaving room for tissues to expand. But they must use extreme care when they cut open the cast with a saw to avoid cutting patients with the rotating blade or burning them with heat generated from its friction.

“Each year, thousands of children are harmed from improper casting and must go through additional procedures to fix the damage done,” Kelly says.

That’s why she and her colleagues are developing a better way to train interns before they start their orthopedics rotation. Starting this spring, the team will be directing a series of casting workshops to train interns on the proper casting technique.

The workshops will take advantage of models that allow interns to practice without harming patients. Some of these models have simulated bones that show up on an X-ray, allowing participants to evaluate whether they achieved a good reduction once they’re finished. Other models are made of wax that melts if the heat of a cast saw becomes too intense and show nicks if the blade makes contact. Learning proper technique using this tool can help spare human patients painful burns and cuts, Kelly says.

To broaden this effort beyond Children’s National, Kelly and her colleagues received a $1,000 microgrant from the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America to create videos based on material from these workshops. These videos will help trainees at medical institutions across the country learn the same pivotal casting skills.

“A broken bone is difficult enough,” Kelly says. “We’re hoping to decrease the number of times that a child has to have an unnecessary procedure on top of that from a casting mistake that could have been avoided.”

little boy looking at gun

A ‘compelling call’ for pediatricians to discuss firearm safety

little boy looking at gun

The Children’s commentators point to the “extremely dangerous” combination of “the small curious hands of a young child” and “the easily accessible and operable, loaded handgun” and suggest that pediatricians who counsel families about safely storing weapons tailor messaging to the weapon type and the family’s reason for owning a firearm.

Paradoxically, as overall firearm ownership decreased in U.S. households with young children from 1976 to 2016, the proportion of these families who owned handguns increased. This shift in firearm preferences over decades from mostly rifles to mostly handguns coincided with increasing firearm-mortality rates in young children, researchers report Jan. 28, 2019, in Pediatrics.

“Almost 5 million children live in homes where at least one firearm is stored loaded and unlocked,” Kavita Parikh, M.D., a pediatric hospitalist at Children’s National Health System, and co-authors write in an invited commentary. “This study is a loud and compelling call to action for all pediatricians to start open discussions around firearm ownership with all families and share data on the significant risks associated with unsafe storage. It is an even louder call to firearm manufacturers to step up and innovate, test and design smart handguns, inoperable by young children, to prevent unintentional injury,” Dr. Parikh and colleagues continue.

The Children’s commentators point to the “extremely dangerous” combination of “the small curious hands of a young child” and “the easily accessible and operable, loaded handgun” and suggest that pediatricians who counsel families about safely storing weapons tailor messaging to the weapon type and the family’s reason for owning a firearm.

They also advocate for childproofing firearms stored in the home – through free or discounted locks, storing weapons separately from ammunition, and using personalized technology that limits the firearm’s potential to be used by children accidentally. According to a retrospective, cross-sectional study led by Children’s researchers, younger children are more likely to be shot by accident.

“The development of effective safety controls on firearms is not only attainable but could be the next big step towards reducing mortality, especially among our youngest. We as a society should be advocating for continued research to ‘childproof’ firearms so that if families choose to have firearms in the home, the safety of their children is not compromised,” Dr. Parikh and co-authors write.

In addition to Dr. Parikh, the senior author, the Pediatrics commentary co-authors include Lead Author Shilpa J. Patel M.D., MPH, emergency medicine specialist; and co-author Monika K. Goyal M.D., MSCE, assistant division chief and director of research in Children’s Division of Emergency Medicine.

new mom with baby

Fighting perinatal mood and anxiety disorders on multiple levels

new mom with baby

Over the past several decades, it’s become increasingly recognized that perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs), including postpartum depression, are more than just “baby blues.” They’re the most common complication of childbirth in the U.S., affecting about 14 percent of women in their lifetimes and up to 50 percent in some specific populations. PMADs can lead to a variety of adverse outcomes for both mothers and their babies, including poor breastfeeding rates, poor maternal-infant bonding, lower infant immunization rates and maternal suicides that account for up to 20 percent of postpartum deaths.

But while it’s obvious that PMADs are a significant problem, finding a way to solve this issue is far from clear. In a policy statement published December 2018 in the journal Pediatrics, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatric medical homes coordinate more effectively with prenatal providers to ensure PMAD screening occurs for new mothers at well-child checkups throughout the first several weeks and months of infancy and use community resources and referrals to ensure women suffering with these disorders receive follow-up treatment.

To help solve the huge issue of PMADs requires a more comprehensive approach, suggests Lenore Jarvis, M.D., MEd, an emergency medicine specialist at Children’s National Health System. A poster that Dr. Jarvis and colleagues from Children’s Perinatal Mental Health Taskforce recently presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics 2018 National Convention and Exhibit in Orlando, Florida, details the integrated care to help women with PMADs that originated at Children’s National and is being offered at several levels, including individual, interpersonal, organizational, community and policy. The poster was ranked best in its section for the Council on Early Childhood.

At the base level of care for mothers with possible PMADs, Dr. Jarvis says, are the one-on-one screenings that take place in primary care clinics. Currently, all five of Children’s primary care clinics screen for mental health concerns at annual visits. At the 2-week, 1-, 2-, 4- and 6-month visits, mothers are screened for PMADs using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, a validated tool that’s long been used to gauge the risk of postpartum depression. In addition, recent studies at Children’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and emergency department (ED) suggest that performing PMAD screenings in these settings as well could help catch even more women with these disorders: About 45 percent of parents had a positive screen for depression at NICU discharge, and about 27 percent of recent mothers had positive screens for PMADs in the ED.

To further these efforts, Children’s National recently started a Perinatal Mental Health Taskforce to promote multidisciplinary collaboration and open communication with providers among multiple hospital divisions. This taskforce is working together to apply lessons learned from screening in primary care, the NICU and the ED to discuss best practices and develop hospital-wide recommendations. They’re also sharing their experiences with hospitals across the country to help them develop best practices for helping women with PMADs at their own institutions.

Furthering its commitment to PMAD screening, Children’s National leadership set a goal of increasing screening in primary care by 15 percent for fiscal year 2018 – then exceeded it. Children’s National is also helping women with PMADs far outside the hospital’s walls by developing a PMAD screening toolkit for other providers in Washington and across the country and by connecting with community partners through the DC Collaborative for Mental Health in Pediatric Primary Care. In April 2019, the hospital will host a regional perinatal mental health conference that not only will include its own staff but also staff from other local hospitals and other providers who care for new mothers, including midwives, social workers, psychologists, community health workers and doulas.

Finally, on a federal level, Dr. Jarvis and colleagues are part of efforts to obtain additional resources for PMAD screening, referral and treatment. They successfully advocated for Congress to fully fund the Screening and Treatment for Maternal Depression program, part of the 21st Century Cures Act. And locally, they provided testimony to help establish a task force to address PMADs in Washington.

Together, Dr. Jarvis says, these efforts are making a difference for women with PMADs and their families.

“All this work demonstrates that you can take a problem that is very personal, this individual experience with PMADS, and work together with a multidisciplinary team in collaboration to really have an impact and promote change across the board,” she adds.

In addition to Dr. Jarvis, the lead author, Children’s co-authors include Penelope Theodorou, MPH; Sarah Barclay Hoffman, MPP, Program Manager, Child Health Advocacy Institute; Melissa Long, M.D.; Lamia Soghier M.D., MEd, NICU Medical Unit Director; Karen Fratantoni M.D., MPH; and Senior Author Lee Beers, M.D., Medical Director, Municipal and Regional Affairs, Child Health Advocacy Institute.

AlgometRX

Breakthrough device objectively measures pain type, intensity and drug effects

AlgometRX

Clinical Research Assistant Kevin Jackson uses AlgometRx Platform Technology on Sarah Taylor’s eyes to measure her degree of pain. Children’s National is testing an experimental device that aims to measure pain according to how pupils react to certain stimuli. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Pediatric anesthesiologist Julia C. Finkel, M.D., of Children’s National Health System, gazed into the eyes of a newborn patient determined to find a better way to measure the effectiveness of pain treatment on one so tiny and unable to verbalize. Then she realized the answer was staring back at her.

Armed with the knowledge that pain and analgesic drugs produce an involuntary response from the pupil, Dr. Finkel developed AlgometRx, a first-of-its-kind handheld device that measures a patient’s pupillary response and, using proprietary algorithms, provides a diagnostic measurement of pain intensity, pain type and, after treatment is administered, monitors efficacy. Her initial goal was to improve the care of premature infants. She now has a device that can be used with children of any age and adults.

“Pain is very complex and it is currently the only vital sign that is not objectively measured,” says Dr. Finkel, who has more than 25 years of experience as a pain specialist. “The systematic problem we are facing today is that healthcare providers prescribe pain medicine based on subjective self-reporting, which can often be inaccurate, rather than based on an objective measure of pain type and intensity.” To illustrate her point, Dr. Finkel continues, “A clinician would never prescribe blood pressure medicine without first taking a patient’s blood pressure.”

The current standard of care for measuring pain is the 0-to-10 pain scale, which is based on subjective, observational and self-reporting techniques. Patients indicate their level of pain, with zero being no pain and ten being highest or most severe pain. This subjective system increases the likelihood of inaccuracy, with the problem being most acute with pediatric and non-verbal patients. Moreover, Dr. Finkel points out that subjective pain scores cannot be standardized, heightening the potential for misdiagnosis, over-treatment or under-treatment.

Dr. Finkel, who serves as director of Research and Development for Pain Medicine at the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children’s National, says that a key step in addressing the opioid crisis is providing physicians with objective, real-time data on a patient’s pain level and type, to safely prescribe the right drug and dosage or an alternate treatment.,

She notes that opioids are prescribed for patients who report high pain scores and are sometimes prescribed in cases where they are not appropriate. Dr. Finkel points to the example of sciatica, a neuropathic pain sensation felt in the lower back, legs and buttocks. Sciatica pain is carried by touch fibers that do not have opioid receptors, which makes opioids an inappropriate choice for treating that type of pain.

A pain biomarker could rapidly advance both clinical practice and pain research, Dr. Finkel adds. For clinicians, the power to identify the type and magnitude of a patient’s nociception (detection of pain stimuli) would provide a much-needed scientific foundation for approaching pain treatment. Nociception could be monitored through the course of treatment so that dosing is targeted and personalized to ensure patients receive adequate pain relief while reducing side effects.

“A validated measure to show whether or not an opioid is indicated for a given patient could ease the health care system’s transition from overreliance on opioids to a more comprehensive and less harmful approach to pain management,” says Dr. Finkel.

She also notes that objective pain measurement can provide much needed help in validating complementary approaches to pain management, such as acupuncture, physical therapy, virtual reality and other non-pharmacological interventions.

Dr. Finkel’s technology, called AlgometRx, has been selected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to participate in its “Innovation Challenge: Devices to Prevent and Treat Opioid Use Disorder.” She is also the recipient of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Lenore Jarvis at #thisisourlane meeting

#thisisourlane: Pediatricians call for safer firearm storage, enhanced research funding

Lenore Jarvis at #thisisourlane meeting

The 2-year-old scampered unexpectedly into a room, startling a family member. Thinking the toddler was an intruder, the family member fired, hitting the child in the chest.

In the emergency department at Children’s National Health System, Lenore Jarvis, M.D. MEd, FAAP, emergency medicine specialist, and colleagues tried to save the boy’s life, inserting tubes, transfusing blood and attempting to restart his dying heart via CPR. The Children’s team was unsuccessful and emerged covered in the blood of a boy whose death was heartbreaking and preventable.

“Firearm violence is a leading cause of childhood traumatic death and injury,” Dr. Jarvis told attendees of a recent congressional news conference intended to prod the incoming Congress to take more concrete action to prevent firearm violence. She provided snapshots of some of the countless lives of local youths cut short by firearms, including an 8-year-old girl killed on a playground in a drive-by shooting, a 13-year-old young man murdered during a fight, a 15-year-old young woman who committed suicide and an entire family who died from firearm injuries.

“I wish it were not so. But these stories are endless. In our emergency department, the effects of gun violence are frequent, life-altering and personal,” Dr. Jarvis said.

The #ThisISOurLane press conference, convened by U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, (D-Illinois), included haunting stories by clinicians from across the nation about the devastating impact of firearm injuries on children and youth. According to a retrospective, cross-sectional study led by Children’s researchers, younger children are more likely to be shot by accident, and odds are higher that older youths are victims of an assault involving a firearm.

“Gun violence is a public health crisis and should be addressed as such. We need to reduce the numbers of suicides, homicides and accidental gun deaths in children,” added Dr. Jarvis, who also is president-elect of the District of Columbia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

During the news conference, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., (D-New Jersey), vowed that the House Energy and Commerce Committee he chairs this session will move forward languishing bills, including funding the Centers for Disease Control Prevention to conduct firearms violence research.

PICU room

How to help bereaved families

PICU room

To help clinicians provide better care to families after children die, Tessie W. October, M.D., MPH, and colleagues recently published an article on this topic in a special supplement to Pediatric Critical Care Medicine on death and dying.

Death and dying are always difficult topics to discuss at hospitals. They’re especially hard conversations when they occur within pediatric intensive care units (PICUs), says Tessie W. October, M.D., MPH, a critical care specialist at Children’s National.

“It’s almost easier to pretend that children don’t die in the ICU. But they do,” Dr. October says.

Tragically, some children do die in ICUs. However, even when pediatric patients die, Dr. October adds, the pediatric care team’s relationship with the bereaved family continues. Knowing how to help vulnerable families during these trying times and ensuring they have needed resources can be critical to lessening the health and social consequences of grief. To help clinicians provide better care to families after children die, Dr. October and colleagues recently published an article on this topic in a special supplement to Pediatric Critical Care Medicine on death and dying.

The multi-institutional research team performed a narrative literature review for this budding field. They pored through more than 75 papers to better understand the health outcomes of parents whose child died within a PICU and the different ways that hospitals help families cope with these tragedies.

The researchers found a range of detrimental health outcomes, from a significantly increased risk of parental death in the aftermath of a child’s death to higher rates of myocardial infarction, cancer and multiple sclerosis. Bereaved parents used more health care resources themselves, took more sick days and had more sleep problems than parents who weren’t bereaved.

Likewise, parents whose child died were at a high risk of experiencing mental health conditions including complicated grief, anxiety, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder. Divorce was eight times higher among bereaved parents compared with the general population, and financial crises were common after voluntary or involuntary unemployment.

Knowing which risks parents could face can help the care team respond better if a child dies, Dr. October explains. Their review highlighted simple ways to support families in the immediate aftermath of a child’s death and beyond, such as:

  • Giving parents the opportunity to spend time alone with the child’s body
  • Allowing friends, family and others to visit at the parents’ discretion and
  • Providing easy access to professional support, such as chaplains, social workers and grief coordinators.

Even simple acts such as closing doors and blinds to provide privacy can be helpful, Dr. October says.

An ongoing relationship with health care providers is also important for helping parents grieve, she adds. Children’s National is among hospitals across the country to set up meetings for parents and other family members within weeks of a child’s death. This gives parents a chance to ask questions about what happened in the confusing blur of the PICU and to gather resources for themselves and surviving siblings. Children’s National also provides ongoing support through periodic calls, sending sympathy cards, attending funeral services and in a special annual memorial during which surviving family members release butterflies.

“Our role doesn’t end when a child dies,” Dr. October says. “To help parents through bereavement, we need to maintain that strong connection.”

Another way to help bereaved families is to make sure they have adequate information, she adds, particularly about the confusing subject of brain death. In a different study recently published in Chest Journal, Dr. October and Children’s colleagues sought to understand which information the public typically accesses about this topic.

The team searched Google and YouTube using “brain dead” and “brain death” as search terms. They evaluated the top 10 results on both sites, assessing the accuracy of information using 2010 guidelines released by the American Academy of Neurology. They also assessed the reading level of websites and evaluated comments about the YouTube videos for content accuracy and tone.

They found that there was inaccurate information on four of the 10 websites, six of the 10 videos and within 80 percent of the YouTube comments. Most of these inaccuracies dealt with using terms like brain death, coma and persistent vegetative state interchangeably. “These conditions are very different and affect how we treat patients,” Dr. October says.

The average reading level of the websites was 12th grade, far too sophisticated for much of the public to comprehend, she adds. And the majority of comments on the YouTube videos were negative, often disparaging clinicians and deriding organ donation.

“It’s really important for providers to recognize that this is an emotionally laden topic, and a lot of times, families come to us with information that’s not always true,” she says. “That’s why it’s especially important for the field to respond with empathy and care.”

In addition to Dr. October, co-authors of the Pediatric Critical Care Medicine study include Karen Dryden-Palmer, R.N., MSN, Ph.D., The Hospital for Sick Children; Beverley Copnell, Ph.D., BAppSc, R.N., Monash University; and Senior Author Kathleen L. Meert, M.D., FCCM, Children’s Hospital of Michigan. Dr. October’s co-authors for the Chest Journal article include Lead Author, Amy H. Jones, M.D., and co-author Zoelle B. Dizon, BA, both of Children’s National.

emergency signs

Disparities in who accesses emergency mental health services

emergency signs

A Children’s research team found the number of children and adolescents visiting the nation’s emergency departments due to mental health concerns continued to rise at an alarming rate from 2012 through 2016, with mental health diagnoses for non-Latino blacks outpacing such diagnoses among youth of other racial/ethnic groups.

The demand for mental health services continues to be high in the U.S., even among children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that one in seven U.S. children aged 2 to 8 had a diagnosed mental, behavioral or developmental disorder. In addition, 3 percent of U.S. children aged 3 to 17 had a diagnosis of anxiety, and 2.1 were diagnosed with depression, according to the CDC.

Knowing which children use mental health services can help health care providers improve access and provide more targeted interventions.

Children’s researchers recently investigated this question in the emergency room setting, reporting results from their retrospective cross-sectional study at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 2018 National Conference & Exhibition. The research team found the number of children and adolescents visiting the nation’s emergency departments due to mental health concerns continued to rise at an alarming rate from 2012 through 2016, with mental health diagnoses for non-Latino blacks outpacing such diagnoses among youth of other racial/ethnic groups.

“Access to mental health services among children can be difficult, and data suggest that it can be even more challenging for minority children compared with non-minority youths,” says Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE, assistant division chief and director of research in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Children’s National Health System and the study’s senior author. “Our findings underscore the importance of improving access to outpatient mental health resources as well as expanding capacity within the nation’s emergency departments to respond to this unmet need.”

An estimated 17.1 million U.S. children are affected by a psychiatric disorder, making mental health disorders among the most common pediatric illnesses. Roughly 2 to 5 percent of all emergency department visits by children are related to mental health concerns. The research team hypothesized that within that group, there might be higher numbers of minority children visiting emergency departments seeking mental health services.

To investigate this hypothesis, they examined Pediatric Health Information System data, which aggregates deidentified information from patient encounters at more than 45 children’s hospitals around the nation. Their analyses showed that in 2012, 50.4 emergency department visits per 100,000 children were for mental health-related concerns. By 2016, that figure had grown to 78.5 emergency department visits per 100,000 children.

During that same five-year time span, there were 242,036 visits by children and adolescents 21 and younger with mental health-related issues*. Within that group:

  • The mean age was 13.3
  • Nearly 55 percent were covered by public insurance
  • 78.4 per 100,000 non-Latino black children received mental health-related diagnoses and
  • 51.5 per 100,000 non-Latino white children received mental health-related diagnoses.

“When stratified by race and ethnicity, mental health-related visits to the nation’s emergency departments rose for non-Latino black children and adolescents at almost double the rate seen for non-Latino white children and adolescents,” Dr. Goyal adds. “These children come to our emergency departments in crisis, and across the nation children’s hospitals need to expand mental health resources to better serve these vulnerable patients.”

Because the study did not include reviews of individual charts or interviews with patients or providers, the reason for the disparate demand for mental health resources remains unclear.

*The number of patient visits during the five-year study period was revised on Nov. 1 2018, after updated analyses.

American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition presentation

  • “Racial disparities in pediatric mental health-related emergency department visits: a five-year, multi-institutional study.”

Anna Abrams, M.D.; Gia Badolato, MPH; Robert McCarter Jr., ScD; and Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE

ambulance

Accident or assault? Pediatric firearm injuries differ by age

ambulance

According to a retrospective, cross-sectional study led by Children’s researchers, younger kids are more likely to be shot by accident, and odds are higher that older youths are victims of an assault involving a firearm.

An increasing number of children are injured by firearms in the U.S. each year, but the reasons these injuries happen vary. According to a new retrospective, cross-sectional study led by Children’s researchers and presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 2018 National Conference & Exhibition, firearm injuries vary by the intent of the person discharging the weapon. Younger kids are more likely to be shot by accident, and odds are higher that older youths are victims of an assault involving a firearm. Efforts to protect children from firearm-related injuries should factor in these differences in intent as legislation and policies are drafted, the study team suggests.

Researchers led by Shilpa J. Patel, M.D., MPH, Children’s assistant professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine, reviewed data aggregated in the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample from 2009 to 2013 looking for emergency department visits to treat firearm-related injuries suffered by children and adolescents 21 and younger. They excluded emergency department visits for firearm-related injuries attributed to air, pellet, BB or paintball guns.

Firearm-related injuries are a leading cause of injury and death for U.S. children. Some 111,839 children and youth were treated in emergency departments for firearm-related injuries, or 22,367 per year when averaged over the five-year study period. Nearly 63 percent of these youths were injured by accident; 30.4 percent were victims of assault; 1.4 percent used a firearm to injure themselves. Of note:

  • 89.3 percent were male
  • Their mean age was 18 (67.3 percent 18 to 21; 27.9 percent 13 to 17; 4.8 percent younger than 12)
  • 1 percent were discharged from the emergency department
  • 30 percent had injuries grave enough to trigger hospital admission and
  • 1 percent died from their injuries.

“Children younger than 12 were more likely to be shot by accident. By contrast, we found that the odds of experiencing firearm-related injuries due to assault were higher for youths aged 18 to 21,” Dr. Patel says. “Physicians can play a powerful role in preventing pediatric firearm-related injuries by routinely screening for firearm access and speaking with families about safe firearm storage and violence prevention,” she adds.

Some 52.1 percent of children with firearm-related injuries lived with families whose median household incomes exceeded $56,486.

American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition presentation

  • “Emergency department visits for pediatric firearm-related injury: by intent of injury.”

Shilpa J. Patel, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine and lead author, Gia M. Badolato, MPH, senior clinical research data manager and study co-author, Kavita Parikh, M.D., MS, associate professor of pediatrics and study co-author, and Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE, assistant division chief and director of Academic Affairs and Research in the Division of Emergency Medicine and study senior author, all of Children’s National Health System; and Sabah F. Iqbal, M.D., medical director, PM Pediatrics, study co-author.

Femoral fracture

Broken system? Pain relief for fractures differs by race/ethnicity

Femoral fracture

Data collected by a multi-institutional research team show that kids’ pain from long bone fractures may be managed differently in the emergency department depending on the child’s race and ethnicity.

Children who experience broken bones universally feel pain. However, a new multi-institutional study presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 2018 National Conference & Exhibition suggests that emergency treatment for this pain among U.S. children is far from equal. Data collected by the research team show that kids’ pain may be managed differently in the emergency department depending on the child’s race and ethnicity. In particular, while non-Latino black children and Latino children are more likely to receive any analgesia, non-white children with fractured bones are less likely to receive opioid pain medications, even when they arrive at the emergency department with similar pain levels.

“We know from previously published research that pain may be treated differentially based on a patient’s race or ethnicity in the emergency department setting. Our prior work has demonstrated that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to receive opioid analgesia to treat abdominal pain, even when these patients are diagnosed with appendicitis,” says study leader Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE, assistant division chief and director of Academic Affairs and Research in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Children’s National Health System. “Emergency departments delivering evidence-based care should treat all pediatric patients consistently. These findings extend our work by demonstrating that children presenting with long bone fractures also experience differential treatment of pain based on their race or ethnicity.”

The AAP calls appropriately controlling children’s pain and stress “a vital component of emergency medical care” that can affect the child’s overall emergency medical experience. Because fractures of long bones – clavicle, humerus, ulna, radius, femur, tibia, fibula – are commonly managed in the emergency department, the research team tested a hypothesis about disparities in bone fracture pain management.

They conducted a retrospective cohort study of children and adolescents 21 and younger who were diagnosed with a long bone fracture from July 1, 2014, through June 30, 2017. They analyzed deidentified electronic health records stored within the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network Registry, which collects data from all patient encounters at seven pediatric emergency departments.

During that time, 21,642 patients with long bone fractures met the study inclusion criteria and experienced moderate to severe pain, rating four or higher on a 10-point pain scale. Some 85.1 percent received analgesia of any type; 41.5 percent received opioid analgesia. Of note:

  • When compared with non-Hispanic white children, minority children were more likely to receive pain medication of any kind (i.e. non-Latino black patients were 58 percent more likely to receive any pain medication, and Latino patients were 23 percent more likely to receive any pain medication).
  • When compared with non-Latino white children, minority children were less likely to receive opioid analgesia (i.e., non-Latino black patients were 30 percent less likely to receive opioid analgesia, and Latino patients were 28 percent less likely to receive opioid analgesia).

“Even though minority children with bone fractures were more likely to receive any type of pain medication, it is striking that minority children were less likely to receive opioid analgesia, compared with white non-Latino children,” Dr. Goyal says. “While it’s reassuring that we found no racial or ethnic differences in reduction of patients’ pain scores, it is troubling to see marked differences in how that pain was managed.”

Dr. Goyal and colleagues are planning future research that will examine the factors that inform how and why emergency room physicians prescribe opioid analgesics.

American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition presentation

  • “Racial and ethnic differences in the management of pain among children diagnosed with long bone fractures in pediatric emergency departments.”

Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE, and James M. Chamberlain, M.D., Children’s National; Tiffani J. Johnson, M.D., MSc, Scott Lorch, M.D., MSCE, and Robert Grundmeier, M.D., Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Lawrence Cook, Ph.D., Michael Webb, MS, and Cody Olsen, MS, University of Utah School of Medicine; Amy Drendel, DO, MS, Medical College of Wisconsin; Evaline Alessandrini, M.D., MSCE, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital; Lalit Bajaj, M.D., MPH, Denver Children’s Hospital; and Senior Author, Elizabeth Alpern, M.D., MSCE, Lurie Children’s Hospital.

Tessie October

Effectively expressing empathy to improve ICU care

Tessie October

“Families who feel we’re really listening and care about what they have to say are more likely to feel comfortable as they put their child’s life in our hands a second, third or fourth time,” says Tessie W. October, M.D., M.P.H.

In nearly every intensive care unit (ICU) at every pediatric hospital across the country, physicians hold numerous care conferences with patients’ family members daily. Due to the challenging nature of many these conversations – covering anything from unexpected changes to care plans for critically ill children to whether it’s time to consider withdrawing life support – these talks tend to be highly emotional.

That’s why physician empathy is especially important, says Tessie W. October, M.D., M.P.H., critical care specialist at Children’s National Health System.

Several studies have shown that when families believe that physicians hear, understand or share patients’ or their family’s emotions, patients can achieve better outcomes, Dr. October explains. When families feel like their physicians are truly empathetic, she adds, they’re more likely to share information that’s crucial to providing the best care.

“For the most part, our families do not make one-time visits. They return multiple times because their children are chronically ill,” Dr. October says. “Families who feel we’re really listening and care about what they have to say are more likely to feel comfortable as they put their child’s life in our hands a second, third or fourth time. They’re also less likely to regret decisions made in the hospital, which makes them less likely to experience long-term psychosocial outcomes like depression and anxiety.”

What’s the best way for physicians to show empathy? Dr. October and a multi-institutional research team set out to answer this question in a study published online in JAMA Network Open on July 6, 2018.

With families’ consent, the researchers recorded 68 care conferences that took place at Children’s pediatric ICU (PICU) between Jan. 3, 2013, to Jan. 5, 2017. These conversations were led by 30 physicians specializing in critical care, hematology/oncology and other areas and included 179 family members, including parents.

During these conferences, the most common decision discussed was tracheostomy placement – a surgical procedure that makes an opening in the neck to support breathing – followed by the family’s goals, other surgical procedures or medical treatment. Twenty-two percent of patients whose care was discussed during these conferences died during their hospitalization, highlighting the gravity of many of these talks.

Dr. October and colleagues analyzed each conversation, counting how often the physicians noticed opportunities for empathy and how they made empathetic statements. The researchers were particularly interested in whether empathetic statements were “buried,” which means they were:

  • Followed immediately by medical jargon
  • Followed by a statement beginning with the word “but” that included more factual information or
  • Followed by a second physician interrupting with more medical data.

That compares with “unburied” empathy, which was followed only by a pause that provided the family an opportunity to respond. The research team examined what happened after each type of empathetic comment.

The researchers found that physicians recognized families’ emotional cues 74 percent of the time and made 364 empathetic statements. About 39 percent of these statements were buried. In most of these instances, says Dr. October, the study’s lead author, the buried empathy either stopped the conversation or led to family members responding with a lack of emotion themselves.

After the nearly 62 percent of empathetic statements that were unburied, families tended to answer in ways that revealed their hopes and dreams for the patient, expressed gratitude, agreed with care advice or expressed mourning—information that deepened the conversation and often offered critical information for making shared decisions about a patient’s care.

Physicians missed about 26 percent of opportunities for empathy. This and striving to make more unburied empathetic statements are areas ripe for improvement, Dr. October says.

That’s why she and colleagues are leading efforts to help physicians learn to communicate better at Children’s National. To express empathy more effectively, Dr. October recommends:

  • Slow down and be in the moment. Pay close attention to what patients are saying so you don’t miss their emotional cues and opportunities for empathy.
  • Remember the “NURSE” mnemonic. Empathetic statements should Name the emotion, show Understanding, show Respect, give Support or Explore emotions.
  • Avoid using the word “but” as a transition. When you follow an empathetic statement with “but,” Dr. October says, it cancels out what you said earlier.
  • Don’t be afraid to invite strong emotions. Although it seems counterintuitive, Dr. October says helping patients express strong feelings can help process emotions that are important for decision-making.

In addition to Dr. October, study co-authors include Zoelle B. Dizon, BA, Children’s National; Robert M. Arnold, M.D., University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; and Senior Author, Abby R. Rosenberg, M.D., MS, University of Washington School of Medicine.

Research covered in this story was supported by the National Institutes of Health under grants 5K12HD047349-08 and 1K23HD080902 and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences under Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Children’s National Health System grant number UL1TR0001876.

Emergency Department Check in

Missed opportunities for STI screening in the ED

Emergency Department Check in

Researchers found that even though young women with pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) are at increased risk for also being infected with syphilis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), few adolescent females diagnosed with PID in U.S. pediatric emergency departments (ED) undergo laboratory tests for HIV or syphilis.

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are on the rise in the U.S., reaching unprecedented highs in recent years for the three most common STIs reported in the nation: chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. Nearly half of the 20 million new STI cases each year are in adolescents aged 15 to 24, according to the Department of Health & Human Services. In particular, about two in five sexually active teen girls has an STI.

These infections can be far more than an embarrassing nuisance; some can cause lifelong infertility. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, undiagnosed STIs cause infertility in more than 20,000 women each year.

A new retrospective cohort study led by researchers at Children’s National Health System and published online July 24, 2018, in Pediatrics shines a stark spotlight on missed opportunities for diagnosis. Researchers found that even though young women with pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) are at increased risk for also being infected with syphilis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), few adolescent females diagnosed with PID in U.S. pediatric emergency departments (ED) undergo laboratory tests for HIV or syphilis.

A team of Children’s researchers reviewed de-identified data from the Pediatric Health Information System, a database that aggregates encounter-level data from 48 children’s hospitals across the nation. From 2010 through 2015, there were 10,698 diagnosed cases of PID among young women aged 12 to 21. Although HIV and syphilis screening rates increased over the study period, just 27.7 percent of these women underwent syphilis screening, 22 percent were screened for HIV, and only 18.4 percent underwent lab testing for both HIV and syphilis.

Screening rates varied dramatically by hospital, with some facilities screening just 2 percent of high-risk young women while others tested more than 60 percent.

HIV screening was more likely to occur among:

  • Women admitted to the hospital, compared with those discharged from the ED (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] of 7.0)
  • Uninsured women, compared with women with private insurance (1.6 aOR)
  • Non-Latino African American women, compared with non-Latino white women (1.4 aOR)
  • Women seen at small hospitals with fewer than 300 beds (1.4 aOR)
  • Women with public insurance compared with women with private insurance (1.3 aOR)
  • 12-year-olds to 16-year-olds, compared with older adolescents (1.2 aOR)

Syphilis screening was more likely to occur for:

  • Women admitted to the hospital (4.6 aOR)
  • Non-Latino African American women (1.8 aOR)
  • Uninsured women (1.6 aOR)
  • Women with public insurance (1.4 aOR)
  • 12-year-olds to 16-year-olds (1.1 aOR)

“We know that 20 percent of the nearly 1 million cases of PID that are diagnosed each year occur in young women, with the majority of diagnoses made in EDs. It is encouraging that HIV and syphilis screening rates for women with PID increased over the study period. However, our findings point to missed opportunities to safeguard young women’s reproductive health,” says Monika K. Goyal, M.D., M.S.C.E., assistant professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine and the study’s senior author. “Such discrepancies in screening across the 48 hospitals we studied underscore the need for a standardized approach to sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening.”

Untreated STIs can cause PID, an infection of a woman’s reproductive organs that can complicate her ability to get pregnant and also can cause infertility. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that all women diagnosed with PID be tested for HIV. The CDC’s treatment guidelines also recommend screening people at high risk for syphilis.

“Syphilis infection rates have steadily increased each year, and it is now most prevalent among young adults,” Dr. Goyal says. “Future research should examine how STI screening can be improved in emergency departments, especially since adolescents at high risk for STIs often access health care through EDs. We also should explore innovative approaches, including electronic alerts and shared decision-making to boost STI screening rates for young women.”

In addition to Dr. Goyal, Children’s study co-authors include Lead Author, Amanda Jichlinski, M.D.; and co-authors, Gia Badolato, M.P.H., and William Pastor, M.A., M.P.H.

Research reported in this news release was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development under K23 award number HD070910.

Lenore Jarvis

Screening for postpartum depression in the emergency department

Lenore Jarvis

“Some of these women had no idea how common postpartum depression was,” says Lenore Jarvis, M.D., M.Ed. “They thought they were crazy and felt alone and were bad moms.”

It’s a scenario that Children’s emergency medicine specialist Lenore Jarvis, M.D., M.Ed., has seen countless times: A mother brings her infant to the emergency department (ED) in the middle of the night with a chief complaint of the baby being fussy. Nothing she does can stop the incessant crying, she tells the triage nurse. When doctors examine the baby, they don’t see anything wrong. Often, this finding is reassuring. But, despite their best efforts to comfort her, the mother isn’t reassured and leaves the hospital feeling anxious and overwhelmed.

After these encounters, Dr. Jarvis wondered: Might the mother be the actual patient?

Postpartum depression (PPD) is the most common complication of childbirth, Dr. Jarvis explains, occurring in up to 20 percent of all mothers, and may be higher (up to 50 percent) in low-income and immigrant women. Far beyond simple “baby blues,” the mood disorder can have significant implications for the mother, her baby and the entire family. It can hinder mother-child bonding and lead to early discontinuation of breastfeeding, delayed immunizations, and child abuse and neglect. The associated effects on early brain development might cause cognitive and developmental delays for the infant and, later in life, can manifest as emotional and behavioral problems. PPD can disrupt relationships between parents. And suicide is the top cause of postpartum death.

Mothers are supposed to be screened routinely for PPD at postpartum visits with their maternal or pediatric health care providers. In addition, several medical professional societies – including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists – now recommend screening for PPD in the prenatal and postnatal periods and during routine well-child visits in the outpatient setting. But these screenings often don’t happen, Dr. Jarvis says, either because doctors aren’t following the recommendations or parents aren’t attending these visits due to barriers to health care access or other problems.

One way to sidestep these challenges, she says, is to provide PPD screening in the emergency setting.

“The ED becomes the safety net for people who are not routinely accessing regular checkups for themselves and their children,” Dr. Jarvis says. “If a mother is having an acute crisis in the middle of the night and feeling anxious and depressed, they often come to the emergency department for help.”

Dr. Jarvis and colleagues launched a pilot study in the Children’s ED to screen for PPD. For eight months beginning June 2015, the researchers invited English- and Spanish-speaking mothers who arrived at the ED with infants 6 months old or younger with complaints that didn’t necessitate immediate emergency care to take a short questionnaire on a computer tablet. This questionnaire included the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, a well-validated tool to screen for PPD, along with basic sociodemographic questions and queries about risk factors that other studies previously identified for PPD.

Just over half agreed to participate. When Dr. Jarvis and colleagues analyzed the results from these 209 mothers, they found that 27 percent scored positive for PPD, more than the average from previous estimates. Fourteen of those mothers reported having suicidal thoughts. Surprisingly, nearly half of participants reported that they’d never been screened previously for PPD, despite standing recommendations for routine screenings at mother and baby care visits, the research team writes in findings published online May 5, 2018, in Pediatric Emergency Care.

Based on the screening results, the researchers implemented a range of interventions. All mothers who participated in the study received an informational booklet from the March of Dimes on PPD. If mothers scored positive, they also received a local PPD resource handout and were offered a consultation with a social worker. Those with a strongly positive score were required to receive a social worker consultation and were given the option of “warm-line” support to PPD community partners, a facilitated connection to providers who offer individual or group therapy or home visits, or to a psychiatrist who might prescribe medication. Mothers with suicidal thoughts were assessed by a physician and assisted by crisis intervention services, if needed.

When the researchers followed up with mothers who screened positive one month later, an overwhelming majority said that screening in the ED was important and that the resources they were given had been key for finding help. Many commented that even the screening process seemed like a helpful intervention.

“Some of these women had no idea how common PPD was. They thought they were crazy and felt alone and were bad moms,” Dr. Jarvis says. “For someone to even ask about PPD made these women aware that this exists, and it’s something people care about.”

Many thanked her and colleagues for the follow-up call, she adds, saying that it felt good to be cared for and checked on weeks later. “It goes to show that putting support systems in place for these new mothers is very important,” she says.

Dr. Jarvis and ED colleagues are currently collaborating with social workers, neonatology and other Children’s National Health System care partners to start screening mothers in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and ED for PPD. They plan to compare results generated by this universal screening to those in their study. These findings will help researchers better understand the prevalence of PPD in mothers with higher triage acuity levels and how general rates of PPD for mothers in the ED and NICU compare with those generated in past studies based on well-child checks. Eventually, she says, they would like to study whether the interventions they prescribed affected the known consequences of PPD, such as breastfeeding,  timely immunization rates and behavior outcomes.

“With appropriate care and resources,” Dr. Jarvis adds, “we’re hoping to improve the lives of these women and their families.”

In addition to Dr. Jarvis, the lead study author, Children’s co-authors include Kristen A. Breslin, M.D., M.P.H.; Gia M. Badolato, M.P.H.; James M. Chamberlain, M.D.; and Monika K. Goyal, M.D., MSCE, the study’s senior author.

Making the grade: Children’s National is nation’s Top 5 children’s hospital

Children’s National rose in rankings to become the nation’s Top 5 children’s hospital according to the 2018-19 Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll released June 26, 2018, by U.S. News & World Report. Additionally, for the second straight year, Children’s Neonatology division led by Billie Lou Short, M.D., ranked No. 1 among 50 neonatal intensive care units ranked across the nation.

Children’s National also ranked in the Top 10 in six additional services:

For the eighth year running, Children’s National ranked in all 10 specialty services, which underscores its unwavering commitment to excellence, continuous quality improvement and unmatched pediatric expertise throughout the organization.

“It’s a distinct honor for Children’s physicians, nurses and employees to be recognized as the nation’s Top 5 pediatric hospital. Children’s National provides the nation’s best care for kids and our dedicated physicians, neonatologists, surgeons, neuroscientists and other specialists, nurses and other clinical support teams are the reason why,” says Kurt Newman, M.D., Children’s President and CEO. “All of the Children’s staff is committed to ensuring that our kids and families enjoy the very best health outcomes today and for the rest of their lives.”

The excellence of Children’s care is made possible by our research insights and clinical innovations. In addition to being named to the U.S. News Honor Roll, a distinction awarded to just 10 children’s centers around the nation, Children’s National is a two-time Magnet® designated hospital for excellence in nursing and is a Leapfrog Group Top Hospital. Children’s ranks seventh among pediatric hospitals in funding from the National Institutes of Health, with a combined $40 million in direct and indirect funding, and transfers the latest research insights from the bench to patients’ bedsides.

“The 10 pediatric centers on this year’s Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll deliver exceptional care across a range of specialties and deserve to be highlighted,” says Ben Harder, chief of health analysis at U.S. News. “Day after day, these hospitals provide state-of-the-art medical expertise to children with complex conditions. Their U.S. News’ rankings reflect their commitment to providing high-quality care.”

The 12th annual rankings recognize the top 50 pediatric facilities across the U.S. in 10 pediatric specialties: cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery, neonatology, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, pulmonology and urology. Hospitals received points for being ranked in a specialty, and higher-ranking hospitals receive more points. The Best Children’s Hospitals Honor Roll recognizes the 10 hospitals that received the most points overall.

This year’s rankings will be published in the U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals 2019” guidebook, available for purchase in late September.

IV Bag

New study examines treatment for diabetic ketoacidosis

IV Bag

Brain injuries that happen during episodes of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) – where the body converts fat instead of sugar into energy, and where the pancreas is unable to process insulin, such as in type 1 diabetes – are rare, and happen in less than 1 percent of DKA episodes, but these injuries can carry lasting consequences – including mild to severe neurological damage.

A new 13-center, randomized, controlled trial published on June 13, 2018, in the New England Journal of Medicine finds two variables – the speed of rehydration fluids administered to patients and the sodium concentrations in these intravenous fluids – don’t impact neurological function or brain damage.

“One medical center would never be able to study this independently because of the relatively small volume of children with DKA that present to any one site,” says Kathleen Brown, M.D., a study author, the medical director of the emergency medicine and trauma center at Children’s National Health System and a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine. “The strength of this research lies in our ability to work with 13 medical centers to study almost 1,400 episodes of children with DKA over five years to see if these variables make a difference. The study design showcases the efficiency of the Pediatric Emergency Center Applied Research Network, or PECARN, a federally-funded initiative that powers collaboration and innovation.”

Researchers have speculated about the techniques of administering intravenous fluids, specifically speed and sodium concentrations, to patients experiencing a DKA episode, with many assuming a faster administration rate of fluids would produce brain swelling. Others argued, from previous data, that these variables may not matter – especially since higher levels of brain damage were noted among children with higher rates of dehydration before they were treated. Some thought DKA created a state of inflammation in the brain, which caused the damage, and that speed and sodium concentration wouldn’t reverse this initial event. The researchers set out to determine the answers to these questions.

The PECARN research team put the data to the test: They created a 2-by-2 factorial design to test the impact of providing 1,255 pediatric patients, ages zero to 18, with higher (.9 percent) and lower (.45 percent) concentrations of sodium chloride at rapid and slow-rate administration speeds during a DKA episode. They administered tests during the first DKA episode and again during a recurrent episode. After analyzing 1,389 episodes, they found that the four different combinations did not have a statistically significant impact on the rate of cognitive decline during the DKA episode or during the 2-month and 6-month recovery periods.

“One of the most important lessons from this study is that diabetic ketoacidosis should be avoided because it can cause harm,” says Dr. Brown. “But the best way to treat diabetic ketoacidosis is to prevent it. Parents can monitor this by checking blood sugar for insulin control and taking their children for treatment as soon as they show signs or symptoms that are concerning.”

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Kidney Disease, symptoms of diabetic ketoacidosis include nausea and vomiting, stomach pain, fruity breath odor and rapid breathing. Untreated DKA can lead to coma and death.

An accompanying video and editorial are available online in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the Health Resources and Services Administration. The PECARN DKA FLUID ClinicalTrials.gov number is NCT00629707.

Children’s National Health System’s Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine has been a lead site for the PECARN network since its inception in 2001.

Stricter state firearms laws can save children’s lives

In a new study presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2018 annual meeting, Children’s researchers find that states with stricter firearm laws have lower rates of firearm-related deaths in children. The same cross-sectional analyses also found that states with laws that mandate universal background checks prior to firearm and ammunition purchases were associated with lower rates of firearm-related mortality in children, compared with states that lack these laws.

“Injuries due to firearms are the nation’s third-leading cause of pediatric death,” says Monika Goyal, M.D., M.S.C.E., director of research in the Division of Emergency Medicine and Trauma Services at Children’s National Health System and lead author of the research paper. “Firearm legislation at the state level varies significantly. Our findings underscore the need for further investigation of which types of state-level firearm legislation most strongly correlate with reduction in pediatric injuries and deaths.”

The research team analyzed data from the 2015 Web-based injury statistics query and reporting system maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to measure the association between Brady Gun Law Scores – a scorecard that evaluates how strict firearms legislation and policies are in all 50 states – and state-based rates of firearm-related death among children aged 21 years and younger.

In 2015, 4,528 children died from firearm-related injuries. Eighty-seven percent were male; 44 percent were non-Latino black; their mean age was 18.

State-specific firearm-related mortality rates among children were as low as 0 per 100,000 to as high as 18 per 100,000. Median mortality rates were lower among the 12 states requiring universal background checks for firearm purchase at 3.8 per 100,000 children compared with 5.7 per 100,000 children in states that did not require background checks. Similarly, the five states with this requirement had a lower median mortality rate, 2.3 per 100,000 children, when compared with states that did not require background checks for ammunition purchase, 5.6 per 100,000 children.

“Newtown. Orlando. Las Vegas. Parkland. Those are among the mass shootings that have occurred across the nation in recent years. While these tragedies often are covered heavily by the news media, they represent a subset of overall pediatric injuries and deaths due to firearms. Pediatric firearm-related injuries are a critical public health issue across the U.S.,” Dr. Goyal adds.

“Pediatricians have helped to educate parents about other public health concerns, such as the danger posed by second-hand exposure to tobacco smoke or non-use of seat belts and car seats. In addition to presenting our most recent study results, members of our research group also hosted a workshop at PAS aimed at inspiring pediatric clinicians to similarly tackle this latest public health challenge and to advocate for firearm safety,” she says.

In addition to Dr. Goyal, study co-authors include Gia Badolato; Shilpa Patel, M.D.; Sabah Iqbal; Katie Donnelly, M.D.; and Kavita Parikh, M.D., M.S.H.S.

inhaler

Keeping kids with asthma out of the hospital

inhaler

Pediatric asthma takes a heavy toll on patients and families alike. Affecting more than 7 million children in the U.S., it’s the most common nonsurgical diagnosis for pediatric hospital admission, with costs of more than $570 million annually. Understanding how to care for these young patients has significantly improved in the last several decades, leading the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to issue evidence-based guidelines on pediatric asthma in 1990. Despite knowing more about this respiratory ailment, overall morbidity – measured by attack rates, pediatric emergency department visits or hospitalizations – has not decreased over the last decade.

“We know how to effectively treat pediatric asthma,” says Kavita Parikh, M.D., M.S.H.S., a pediatric hospitalist at Children’s National Health System. “There’s been a huge investment in terms of quality improvements that’s reflected in how many papers there are about this topic in the literature.”

However, Dr. Parikh notes, most of those quality-improvement papers do not focus on inpatient discharge, a particularly vulnerable time for patients. Up to 40 percent of children who are hospitalized for asthma-related concerns come back through the emergency department within one year. One-quarter of those kids are readmitted.

“It’s clear that we need to do better at keeping kids with asthma out of the hospital. The point at which they’re being discharged might be an effective time to intervene,” Dr. Parikh adds.

To determine which interventions hold promise, Dr. Parikh and colleagues recently performed a systematic review of studies involving quality improvements after inpatient discharge. They published their findings in the May 2018 edition of the journal, Pediatrics. Because May is National Asthma and Allergy Awareness month, she adds, it’s a timely fit.

The researchers combed the literature, looking for research that tested various interventions at the point of discharge for their effect on hospital readmission anywhere from fewer than 30 days after discharge to up to one year later. They specifically searched for papers published from 1991, the year after the NIH issued its original asthma care guidelines, until November 2016.

Their search netted 30 articles that met these criteria. A more thorough review of each of these studies revealed common themes to interventions implemented at discharge:

  • Nine studies focused on standardization of care, such as introducing or revising a specific clinical pathway
  • Nine studies focused on education, such as teaching patients and their families better self-management strategies
  • Five studies focused on tools for discharge planning, such as ensuring kids had medications in-hand at the time of discharge or assigning a case manager to navigate barriers to care and
  • Seven studies looked at the effect of multimodal interventions that combined any of these themes.

When Dr. Parikh and colleagues examined the effects of each type of intervention on hospital readmission, they came to a stunning conclusion: No single category of intervention seemed to have any effect. Only multimodal interventions that combined multiple categories were effective at reducing the risk of readmission between 30 days and one year after initial discharge.

“It’s indicative of what we have personally seen in quality-improvement efforts here at Children’s National,” Dr. Parikh says. “With a complex condition like asthma, it’s difficult for a single change in how this disease is managed to make a big difference. We need complex and multimodal programs to improve pediatric asthma outcomes, particularly when there’s a transfer of care like when patients are discharged and return home.”

One intervention that showed promise in their qualitative analysis of these studies, Dr. Parikh adds, is ensuring patients are discharged with medications in hand—a strategy that also has been examined at Children’s National. In Children’s focus groups, patients and their families have spoken about how having medications with them when they leave the hospital can boost compliance in taking them and avoid difficulties is getting to an outside pharmacy after discharge. Sometimes, they have said, the chaos of returning home can stymie efforts to stay on track with care, despite their best efforts. Anything that can ease that burden may help improve outcomes, Dr. Parikh says.

“We’re going to need to try many different strategies to reduce readmission rates, engaging different stakeholders in the inpatient and outpatient side,” she adds. “There’s a lot of room for improvement.”

In addition to Dr. Parikh, study co-authors include Susan Keller, MLS, MS-HIT, Children’s National; and Shawn Ralston, M.D., M.Sc., Children’s Hospital of Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

Funding for this work was provided by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) under grant K08HS024554. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of AHRQ.

Human Rhinovirus

Finding the root cause of bronchiolitis symptoms

Human Rhinovirus

A new study shows that steroids might work for rhinovirus but not for respiratory syncytial virus.

Every winter, doctors’ offices and hospital emergency rooms fill with children who have bronchiolitis, an inflammation of the small airways in the lung. It’s responsible for about 130,000 admissions each year. Sometimes these young patients have symptoms reminiscent of a bad cold with a fever, cough and runny nose. Other times, bronchiolitis causes breathing troubles so severe that these children end up in the intensive care unit.

“The reality is that we don’t have anything to treat these patients aside from supportive care, such as intravenous fluids or respiratory support,” says Robert J. Freishtat, M.D., M.P.H., chief of emergency medicine at Children’s National Health System. “That’s really unacceptable because some kids get very, very sick.”

Several years ago, Dr. Freishtat says a clinical trial tested using steroids as a potential treatment for bronchiolitis. The thinking was that these drugs might reduce the inflammation that’s a hallmark of this condition. However, he says, the results weren’t a slam-dunk for steroids: The drugs didn’t seem to improve outcomes any better than a placebo.

But the trial had a critical flaw, he explains. Rather than having one homogenous cause, bronchiolitis is an umbrella term for a set of symptoms that can be caused by a number of different viruses. The most common ones are respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and rhinovirus, the latter itself being an assortment of more than 100 different but related viruses. By treating bronchiolitis as a single disease, Dr. Freishtat says researchers might be ignoring the subtleties of each virus that influence whether a particular medication is useful.

“By treating all bronchiolitis patients with a single agent, we could be comparing apples with oranges,” he says. “The treatment may be completely different depending on the underlying cause.”

To test this idea, Dr. Freishtat and colleagues examined nasal secretions from 32 infants who had been hospitalized with bronchiolitis from 2011 to 2014 at 17 medical centers across the country that participate in a consortium called the 35th Multicenter Airway Research Collaboration. In half of these patients, lab tests confirmed that their bronchiolitis was caused by RSV; in the other half, the cause was rhinovirus.

From these nasal secretions, the researchers extracted nucleic acids called microRNAs. These molecules regulate the effects of different genes through a variety of different mechanisms, usually resulting in the effects of target genes being silenced. A single microRNA typically targets multiple genes by affecting messenger RNA, a molecule that’s key for producing proteins.

Comparing results between patients with RSV or rhinovirus, the researchers found 386 microRNAs that differed in concentration. Using bioinformatic software, they traced these microRNAs to thousands of messenger RNAs, looking for any interesting clues to important mechanisms of illness that might vary between the two viruses.

Their findings eventually turned up important differences between the two viruses in the NF-kB (nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells) pathway, a protein cascade that’s intimately involved in the inflammatory response and is a target for many types of steroids. Rhinovirus appears to upregulate the expression of many members of this protein family, driving cells to make more of them, and downregulate inhibitors of this cascade. On the other hand, RSV didn’t seem to have much of an effect on this critical pathway.

To see if these effects translated into cells making more inflammatory molecules in this pathway, the researchers searched for various members of this protein cascade in the nasal secretions. They found an increase in two, known as RelA and NFkB2.

Based on these findings, published online Jan. 17, 2018, in Pediatric Research, steroids might work for rhinovirus but not for RSV, notes Dr. Freishtat the study’s senior author.

“We’re pretty close to saying that you’d need to conduct a clinical trial with respect to the virus, rather than the symptoms, to measure any effect from a given drug,” he says.

Future clinical trials might test the arsenal of currently available medicines to see if any has an effect on bronchiolitis caused by either of these two viruses. Further research into the mechanisms of each type of illness also might turn up new targets that researchers could develop new medicines to hit.

“Instead of determining the disease based on symptoms,” he says, “we can eventually treat the root cause.”

Study co-authors include Kohei Hasegawa, study lead author, and Carlos A. Camargo Jr., Massachusetts General Hospital; Marcos Pérez-Losada, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences; Claire E. Hoptay, Samuel Epstein and Stephen J. Teach, M.D., M.P.H., Children’s National; Jonathan M. Mansbach, Boston Children’s Hospital; and Pedro A. Piedra, Baylor College of Medicine.