Neurology and Neurosurgery Research

Center for Neuroscience Research investigators join CIFASD

July 17, 2017

Kazue Hashimoto-Torii and Masaaki Torii, Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

Masaaki Torii, Ph.D., Kazue Hashimoto-Torii, Ph.D., and their research teams are joining Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, a consortium supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Kazue Hashimoto-Torii, Ph.D., Masaaki Torii, Ph.D., and the research teams they lead have joined a national research consortium for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders that is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (CIFASD) aims to leverage multidisciplinary approaches to develop effective interventions and treatments for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.

“Both of our labs have been fortunate in receiving multiple R series research grants from the NIH. I am deeply honored that we now join this prestigious national consortium, which opens additional opportunities to collaborate with other labs with neurobehavioral, genetics and facial dysmorphology expertise as well as other specialized disciplines,” says Hashimoto-Torii, principal investigator in the Center for Neuroscience Research at Children’s National Health System.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders are a constellation of conditions that result from exposure to alcohol in the womb that reflect the vastly different ways fetuses respond to that in utero insult. While early intervention is crucial, one challenge that continues to bedevil the field is trying to determine which pregnancies are most at risk.

“It is crucial to develop early and precise biomarkers for predicting children’s risk for cognitive and behavioral problems,” Hashimoto-Torii says. “Our labs will work on developing a novel approach for identifying such biomarkers.”

The Children’s researchers will examine epigenetic changes at the single cell level that may provide the earliest hint of cognitive and learning difficulties – long before children show any symptoms of such problems. Hashimoto-Torii’s lab will perform single-cell droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based biomarker analysis of blood samples from experimental models and humans. Meanwhile, the lab run by Torii – also a principal investigator in the Center for Neuroscience Research – will collect blood samples from experimental models, perform comprehensive behavioral analysis, and evaluate potential correlations between behaviors seen in the experimental models and their drop-PCR results.

“Under the auspices of CIFASD, we ultimately hope to link these biomarkers from our lab with results that our colleagues are seeing in children in order to validate their ability to accurately predict outcomes from prenatal alcohol exposure,” she says.

Panel: Significant Zika risks linger for pregnant women and developing fetuses in US

July 17, 2017

The threat from Zika “is not over. It is just beginning for the families who are affected by this,” says Roberta L. DeBiasi, M.D., M.S., chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and co-director of the Congenital Zika Virus Program at Children’s National Health System.

The Zika virus epidemic may have fallen off the radar for many media outlets, but significant risks continue to linger for pregnant women and developing fetuses, a panel of experts told staff working for U.S. Congressional leaders.

“The threat of this virus is real, and the threat continues,” Margaret Honein, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) pregnancy and birth defects task force, said during the July 13 briefing held in the Russell Senate Office Building.

Dr. Honein told about 100 attendees that more than 200 Zika-affected babies have been born in the United States suffering from serious birth defects, such as rigid joints, inconsolable distress that causes them to cry continuously and difficulties swallowing. Some of these infants experience seizures that cause further brain damage.

Predicting what Zika will do next in the United States is very difficult, Dr. Honein said, adding that local outbreaks could occur “at any time.” A map she displayed showed Zika’s impact in shades of blue, with Zika infections documented in nearly every state and the highest number of infections – and deepest shade of blue – for California, Florida and Texas.

The threat from Zika “is not over. It is just beginning for the families who are affected by this,” agreed Roberta L. DeBiasi, M.D., M.S., chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and co-director of the Congenital Zika Virus Program at Children’s National Health System.

Since Children’s National launched its Zika program in May 2016, the multidisciplinary team has consulted on 65 mother-fetus/infant pairs, Dr. DeBiasi said. Because in utero Zika infection can result in a wide range of side effects, the Children’s team includes pediatric infectious diseases experts, fetal/neonatal neurologists to consult on seizures, audiologists to assess hearing, physical therapists and orthopaedists to contend with limb contractures, pulmonologists to relieve breathing problems and ophthalmologists to diagnose and treat vision disorders – among other specialists.

“You really need a program that has all of these areas of expertise available for a family,” Dr. DeBiasi told attendees. “It is not possible for a family to organize 27 different appointments if you have a child with these needs.”

Children’s Zika experts also collaborate with researchers in Colombia to gauge the ability of magnetic resonance imaging to produce earlier Zika diagnoses, to assess the role of viral load as biomarkers and to document Zika’s long-term impact on children’s neurodevelopment. The Colombia study has enrolled an additional 85 women/infant pairs.

In one presentation slide, Dr. DeBiasi showed sharp magnetic resonance imaging scans from their research study of a fetal brain at 18 and 22 weeks gestation that indicated clear abnormalities, including abnormal cortical folding. Ultrasound images taken at the exact same time points did not detect these abnormalities, she said.

Asked for advice by an attendee whose clinic treats women who regularly travel between California and Mexico, Dr. DeBiasi underscored the fact that Zika infection poses a risk to developing fetuses even if the pregnant woman has no symptoms of infection. “Whether or not they’re symptomatic, the risk is the same. It’s hard for people to understand that. That is No. 1,” she said.

Another challenge is for women who scrupulously follow the CDC’s guidance on lowering their infection risk while traveling. Upon return, those women may be unaware that they could still be exposed to Zika through unprotected sex with their partner who also has travelled, for as long as six months after travel.

Children’s National is #1 in Neonatology and Top 10 overall in U.S. News & World Report Survey

June 30, 2017

Children’s National is proud to be named #1 in Neonatology in the U.S. News & World Report 2017-18 Best Children’s Hospitals survey. Also, Children’s National was once again named to the coveted Honor Roll, placing them among the Top 10 children’s hospitals in the country.

Being the #1 ranked Neonatology program reflects the quality of care throughout Children’s National because it requires the support and partnership of many other specialties, including cardiology, neurology and surgery. In addition to this honor, Children’s National ranked in the Top 10 in four additional services: Cancer (#7), Neurology and Neurosurgery (#9), Orthopedics (#9) and Nephrology (#10). For the seventh year in a row, Children’s National has ranked in all ten services, a testament to the pediatric care experts across the organization and their commitment to children and families.

“This recognition is a great achievement for Children’s National, affirming our place as a premier destination for pediatric care, and the commitment of our people, partners and supporters to helping every child grow up stronger,” said Kurt Newman, M.D., President and CEO of Children’s National. “I’m particularly proud of our #1 ranking in Neonatology as, in many ways it reflects the quality of care across our hospital. Treating these tiny patients often encompasses many other specialties, including our Fetal Medicine Institute.”

Children’s National is dedicated to improving the lives of children through innovative research, expert care and advocacy on behalf of children’s needs. In addition to being recognized among the “best of the best” by U.S. News & World Report, Children’s National is a Magnet^® designated hospital for excellence in nursing and is a Leapfrog Group Top Hospital. As a top NIH-funded pediatric health system, Children’s National marries cutting-edge research with the highest quality care, to deliver the best possible outcomes for children today and in the future.

Working miracles to control seizures and preserve brain power in newborns

June 29, 2017

In the spring of 2017, a multidisciplinary team applied an innovative approach to help preserve function in the working right hemisphere of a baby who experienced her first seizure hours after birth.

When orderly early fetal brain development is disturbed in one half of the brain, infants can be born with hemimegalencephaly—a rare occurrence—that results in one of the brain’s two hemispheres being oversized, heavy and malformed. This brain malformation arises early in the fetal period of life, is not inherited and is associated with seizures early in life.

Children with hemimegalencephaly can develop horrible seizures within the first hours or days of life. According to published research, every month these infants experience uncontrolled seizures correlates to a steep decline in IQ.

Because these types of seizures do not respond to multiple anti-seizure medications—medicines which may also cause worrisome side effects of their own in neonates—care teams attempt to schedule surgery as soon as feasible to remove or disconnect the hemisphere triggering the damaging seizures. “The ‘bad’ brain does not sustain any function and it interferes with the ‘good’ brain doing what it needs to do,” says William D. Gaillard, M.D., chief of Children’s division of Epilepsy and Neurophysiology and chief of Neurology.

Hemispherectomy is intricate surgery on an organ that is softer than normal and crisscrossed with a tangle of blood vessels that supply the damaged hemisphere with blood. Because of the risks of life-threatening blood loss in very young infants, the dramatic surgery is usually not performed until babies are at least 3 months old and weigh at least 10 pounds.

The challenge: The vulnerable babies who most need relief, infants who have been seizing since early life, are too young for the operation.

Neurosurgeons have clamped the carotid artery that supplies blood to the brain to minimize blood loss when the hemisphere is surgically removed. Dr. Gaillard says knowledge of that approach led the team to think: What if we use embolization—blocking blood supply to targeted locations in the brain—to achieve the same effect? The plan effectively destroys the malformed brain from within, neutralizing its ability to cause the seizures.

“It was eye-opening for us to think about actually inflicting brain injury as a way of treating something in the brain that was causing seizures. That is really novel in itself: We’re thinking out of the box in applying existing techniques in a different age group. The conventional thinking with newborns is to let them be; their seizures don’t look that bad,” says Taeun Chang, M.D., director of Children’s Neonatal Neurology and Neonatal Neurocritical Care Program.

“We have evidence to suggest this is a safe and effective way of avoiding recurrent seizures and minimizing the need to give these infants potentially toxic medications so early in life. Ultimately, this helps a select group of babies who need the surgery to get to the point of being old enough to have it—all the while, sparing the healthy part of their brain,” Dr. Gaillard adds.

Once the embolization ended Darcy’s most severe seizures, the little girl could make eye contact, started smiling, and then graduated from smiling to full laughs. In weekly physical therapy, the infant works on tummy time, head control and ensuring her eyes track.

In the spring of 2017, the multidisciplinary team applied the innovative approach to help preserve function in the working right hemisphere of a baby named Darcy Murphy. Darcy experienced her first seizure hours after she was born, and when she arrived at Children’s National had been in and out of two different emergency rooms in another state for the first few weeks of her life.

The team explained to the Murphy family that Darcy was on multiple medications, but her seizures continued unabated. The options included inducing a coma, sending Darcy home despite ongoing seizures or minimally invasive embolization.

“We would not have even posed this if we were not confident in our ability to do the procedure and deal with potential complications,” Dr. Chang says.

“Oh my gosh, as a parent you know what you’re doing is permanent,” says Rachel Murphy, 29, Darcy’s mom said of the decisions that she and husband Ryan, 33, faced for the youngest of their three children. “What if it’s not the right decision? What if in a week they come out with a new procedure you could have done? We were horrified all the time. The nice part with this procedure is the reward is apparent very quickly, and it just gets better. You don’t have to wait two years to know you made the right decision. You can see half a brain is better than the whole thing for this specific child.”

Once the embolization ended Darcy’s most severe seizures, the little girl could initiate and maintain eye contact with family members, started smiling and then graduated from smiling to full laughs. In weekly physical therapy, the infant works on tummy time, head control and ensuring her eyes track.

Children’s multidisciplinary care team includes experts in newborn intensive care (neonatologists) to aggressively manage seizures in the traditional fashion as they occur and to monitor vital signs; a neonatal neurologist/neurointensivist at the bedside and in the Angio suite monitoring Darcy’s brain activity; a neonatal epileptologist; a surgical epilepsy team; an interventional neuroradiologist; neurosurgeons to perform the delicate functional hemispherectomy to remove any residual brain tissue from the bad hemisphere; and physical therapists working to help Darcy achieve maximum function after surgery.

“We were just like one unit in the sense of being able to provide coherent, comprehensive care. It’s about blood pressure management, breathing, electrolytes, making sure everything is right for going to the operating room,” Dr. Chang explains. “Darcy’s case highlights the ways in which Children’s National is different and offers personalized care that is superior to other centers.”

The team, which recently published a case report of two previous serial embolizations followed by hemispherectomy, plans follow-up papers describing EEG manifestations during an acute stroke in a newborn, advice to the field on best practices for the embolization and using cooling to control the planned brain injury during embolization hemispherectomy.

Revised Nov. 7, 2017

Related resources

A novel way to treat intractable epilepsy caused by hemimegalencephaly

A novel way to treat intractable epilepsy caused by hemimegalencephaly

June 29, 2017

A multidisciplinary team led by Chima Oluigbo, M.D., F.R.C.S.C., pioneered a novel technique to preserve newborns’ healthy brain tissue, buying time until the infants became old enough to undergo a hemispherectomy.

PDF Version

What’s known

Hemimegalencephaly is an extremely rare birth defect in which one side of the brain grows larger than the other. This anomaly typically leads to severe, recurrent seizures that can be difficult to control solely with medications. While the seizures themselves are detrimental to the developing brain, the amount of medications used to reduce seizure frequency often come with significant side effects and have the potential to hamper brain growth. Hemispherectomy, a radical surgery in which one half of the brain is removed, is often the most successful way to treat severe and intractable epilepsy. However, this surgery can be challenging to perform successfully in very young babies.

What’s new

In this case report, the Children’s National Health System Epilepsy Team led by Chima Oluigbo, M.D., F.R.C.S.C., a pediatric neurosurgeon; Tammy N. Tsuchida, M.D., PhD., a pediatric surgical epileptologist; Monica Pearl, M.D., a pediatric interventional neuroradiologist; Taeun Chang, M.D., a neonatal neurointensivist; and the neonatal intensive care team explored the possibility of using minimally invasive surgery to cut off the blood supply to the brain hemisphere responsible for generating seizures in newborns with hemimegalencephaly. This procedure, they reasoned, could buy time for babies to mature and become more resilient to withstand the future hemispherectomy while also lessening the damage caused by uncontrolled, recurrent seizures. The case report focused on the first two patients with hemimegalencephaly who had sequential procedures to gradually restrict blood flow to the affected brain hemisphere within their first few weeks of life, followed by hemispherectomies at a few months of age. This novel approach significantly lessened their seizures until hemispherectomy, allowing these children to continue to grow and develop seizure-free.

Questions for future research

Q: Which patients are best suited for this surgical procedure?
Q: How can surgeons reduce the risk of excessive blood loss during hemispherectomy caused by the growth of additional blood vessels after flow through the brain’s major vessels has been blocked?
Q: What are the long-term outcomes for infants who undergo these procedures?

Source: “ ‘Endovascular embolic hemispherectomy’: A strategy for the initial management of catastrophic holohemispheric epilepsy in the neonate.” Oluigbo, C., M.S. Pearl, T.N. Tsuchida, T. Chang, C.-Y. Ho and W. D. Gaillard. Published by Child’s Nervous System October 29, 2016.

Related resources

Working miracles to control seizures and preserve brain power in neonates

Sudden blindness leads to unusual diagnosis

June 5, 2017

Suresh N. Magge, M.D., and his colleagues at Children’s National recently published the details of an unusual case of advanced moyamoya disease in the journal Stroke.

When Children’s National Health System Neurosurgeon Suresh N. Magge, M.D., met his new patient, the 16-year-old had suddenly lost her vision in both eyes.

To discover the reason for this abrupt loss of vision, her doctors ran a battery of tests. An ophthalmologist found no problems with her eyes. Her optic nerves, which run signals generated from the eyes to the brain, also appeared to work normally. However, a computerized tomography scan and magnetic resonance imaging showed the unmistakable signs of a stroke in her occipital lobe, the portion of the brain responsible for interpreting signals relayed from the optic nerves.

“Her brain basically wasn’t seeing what her eyes saw,” Dr. Magge explains.

Delving deeper, her Children’s National care team found the reason why their young patient had suffered a stroke by using a cerebral angiogram, an imaging test that shows the blood vessels in and around the brain. The teen had moyamoya disease, a rare condition that causes blood vessels in the brain to narrow, often leading otherwise healthy adults and children to have strokes.

According to the National Institutes of Health, moyamoya is Japanese for “puff of smoke,” so named because of the telltale signs this condition presents on an angiogram. When arteries in the brain narrow, brain tissue becomes “thirsty” for more blood, Dr. Magge explains, leading its cells to produce chemicals that prompt new blood vessels to grow. These new collateral blood vessels often grow in a thin tangle that looks like smoke on an angiogram. Generally, however, they do not supply sufficient oxygenated blood to meet the brain’s needs, leaving it starved for oxygen. Eventually, the blood supply can get so low that patients suffer transient ischemic attacks, “mini-strokes” that temporarily deprive the brain tissue of oxygen, or full-blown strokes typically characterized by weakness, speech problems, facial paralysis or other problems.

Dr. Magge’s patient had little warning before her stroke occurred. The first major symptom that led her to seek medical attention was abrupt blindness, which Dr. Magge says is a highly unusual occurrence for a moyamoya diagnosis. That’s why he and colleagues decided to publish the details of her case as a teaching report April 14, 2017 in the journal Stroke.

The Children’s National co-authors wrote that once their patient was diagnosed with a stroke due to advanced moyamoya disease, with blood vessels severely narrowed throughout her brain, the first order of business was stabilizing her symptoms and making sure she did not have further strokes. Her blood pressure was stabilized, and she was started on aspirin therapy to decrease her risk of further strokes. She took time to recover as much as possible from her original stroke.

A few weeks later, Dr. Magge and his neurosurgery colleagues performed a type of surgery to revascularize – or restore blood flow – to areas of the brain that were still healthy but at risk of having subsequent strokes. The surgical procedure, known as pial synangiosis, reconfigures the brain’s blood vessels to make sure that these vulnerable areas of the brain have a sufficient blood supply.

Years later, Dr. Magge says, his patient is doing well, except for the original blindness, a permanent consequence of the stroke to her occipital lobe before her diagnosis. She has not had new strokes since the revascularization surgery. She will need aspirin therapy and periodic neurological checkups for the rest of her life, Dr. Magge explains, to make sure that the blood supply to her brain remains stable.

Children’s experts use a team approach to treat patients with complex care needs: Neurologists, neurosurgeons, intensivists, hematologists, anesthesiologists, neuroradiologists and nurses leverage their combined expertise with moyamoya disease to treat the complexities of this condition.

“A team approach is essential to deliver the best outcomes to children with life-changing diseases,” Dr. Magge says. “We try to help kids get back to living full and healthy lives.”

Will the Zika epidemic re-emerge in 2017?

June 5, 2017

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, discussed the possibility of a reemergence of Zika virus at Children’s National Research and Education Week.

Temperatures are rising, swelling the population of Aedes mosquitoes that transmit the Zika virus and prompting an anxious question: Will the Zika epidemic re-emerge in 2017?

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), sketched out contrasting scenarios. Last year in Puerto Rico, at least 13 percent of residents were infected with Zika, “a huge percentage of the population to get infected in any one outbreak,” Dr. Fauci says. But he quickly adds: “That means that 87 percent of the population” did not get infected. When the chikungunya virus swept through the Caribbean during an earlier outbreak, it did so in multiple waves. “We are bracing for a return of Zika, but we shall see what happens.” Dr. Fauci says.

When it comes to the continental United States, however, previous dengue and chikungunya outbreaks were limited to southern Florida and Texas towns straddling the Mexican border. Domestic Zika transmission last year behaved in much the same fashion.

“Do we think we’re going to get an outbreak [of Zika] that is disseminated throughout the country? The answer is no,” Dr. Fauci adds. “We’re not going to see a major Puerto Rico-type outbreak in the continental United States.”

Dr. Fauci’s remarks were delivered April 24 to a standing-room-only auditorium as part of Research and Education Week, an annual celebration of the cutting-edge research and innovation happening every day at Children’s National. He offered a sweeping, fact-filled summary of Zika’s march across the globe: The virus was first isolated from a primate placed in a treehouse within Uganda’s Zika forest to intentionally become infected; Zika lurked under the radar for the first few decades, causing non-descript febrile illness; it bounced from country to country, causing isolated outbreaks; then, it transformed into an infectious disease of international concern when congenital Zika infection was linked to severe neural consequences for babies born in Brazil.

Zika virus lurked under the radar for several decades, causing non-descript febrile illness; it bounced from country to country, resulting in isolated outbreaks; then, it transformed into an infectious disease of international concern.

“I refer to Brazil and Zika as the perfect storm,” Dr. Fauci told attendees. “You have a country that is a large country with a lot of people, some pockets of poverty and economic depression – such as in the northeastern states – without good health care there, plenty of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and, importantly, a totally immunologically naive population. They had never seen Zika before. The right mosquitoes. The right climate. The right people. The right immunological status. And then, you have the explosion in Brazil.”

In Brazil, 139 to 175 babies were born each year with microcephaly – a condition characterized by a smaller than normal skull – from 2010 to 2014. From 2015 through 2016, that sobering statistic soared to 5,549 microcephaly cases, 2,366 of them lab-confirmed as caused by Zika.

Microcephaly “was the showstopper that changed everything,” says Dr. Fauci. “All of a sudden, [Zika] went from a relatively trivial disease to a disease that had dire consequences if a mother was infected, particularly during the first trimester.”

As Zika infections soared, ultimately affecting more than 60 countries, the virus surprised researchers and clinicians a number of times, by:

Being spread via sex
Being transmitted via blood transfusion, a finding from Brazil that prompted the Food and Drug Administration to recommend testing for all U.S. donated blood and blood products
Decimating developing babies’ neural stem cells and causing a constellation of congenital abnormalities, including vision problems and contractions to surviving infants’ arms and legs
Causing Guillain-Barré syndrome
Triggering transient hearing loss
Causing myocarditis, heart failure and arrhythmias

When it comes to the U.S. national response, Dr. Fauci says one of the most crucial variables is how quickly a vaccine becomes available to respond to the emerging outbreak. For Zika, the research community was able to sequence the virus and launch a Phase I trial in about three months, “the quickest time frame from identification to trial in the history of all vaccinology,” he adds.

Zika is a single-stranded, enveloped RNA virus that is closely related to dengue, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis and Yellow fever viruses, which gives the NIH and others racing to produce a Zika vaccine a leg up. The Yellow fever vaccine, at 99 percent effectiveness, is one of the world’s most effective vaccines.

“I think we will wind up with an effective vaccine. I don’t want to be over confident,” Dr. Fauci says. “The reason I say I believe that we will is because [Zika is] a flavivirus, and we have been able to develop effective flavivirus vaccines. Remember, Yellow fever is not too different from Zika.”

Congenital heart disease and the brain

June 2, 2017

In a recent review article published in Circulation Research, Nobuyuki Ishibashi, M.D., and his colleagues at Children’s National Health System summarized what is currently known about how congenital heart disease affects brain maturation.