Children’s National President and CEO Kurt Newman, M.D.
On April 9, 2019, Children’s National Health System and Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC announced a collaboration to launch JLABS @ Washington, DC, a 32,000-square foot facility that will be located at the new Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus. The new site will serve as an incubator for pharmaceutical, medical device, consumer and health technology companies. The JLABS @ Washington, DC will be the first and only JLABS embedded in an academic environment with a strong pediatric focus. This new endeavor creates additional opportunities for Children’s National and Johnson & Johnson, together with partners, to shape the landscape of policy and funding to improve research and innovation in pediatric health care.
“The vision we pursued for this campus required a global innovation partner with a strong commitment to pediatric health and a clear understanding of the next big areas of opportunity for improving human health. We believe the JLABS model is exactly what is needed to help us drive discoveries that are then rapidly translated into new treatments and technologies,” said Kurt Newman, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Children’s National.
In addition to fast-tracking scientific innovation, JLABS will serve as a significant economic engine by creating new high-paying jobs in Washington, ultimately attracting venture investment in the region. An economic impact report suggests that the completion of the project will produce up to 110 permanent jobs and $150 million in revenue for the city by 2020. By 2030 the project will produce $6.2 billion in cumulative economic activity, 2,100 permanent jobs and $290 million in cumulative tax revenue for the district.
JLABS provides a continuum of innovators from first-time entrepreneurs to serial scientific founders representing diverse experiences across academic, startup, corporate, government regulators, funders and venture worlds.
“The best part of our collaboration with JLABS is facilitating speed to market for breakthrough therapies and technologies that are conceived in our region, including here in our own institution,” said Kolaleh Eskandanian, Ph.D., M.B.A., P.M.P., vice president and chief innovation officer at Children’s National. “I am excited that our partnership will unlock the untapped talent and great science in our region and bring better innovation to market faster with a strong focus on pediatric health.”
The facility will house state-of-the-art research labs and space for pediatric device development. This will expand Children’s National’s molecular genetic testing and biochemical analysis capabilities and enhance device development and computing infrastructure through collaborations with industry, universities, federal agencies and academic medical centers. “The selection of resident companies for the JLABS @ Washington, DC space will be done on a very competitive basis,” says Dr. Eskandanian. “Startup companies that qualify and are selected by JLABS will be offered laboratory and office space as well as mentorship.”
https://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/JLABS.jpg300400Innovation Districthttps://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/innovationdistrict_logo-1-1030x165.pngInnovation District2019-06-06 15:48:472023-07-03 10:58:17Children’s National and Johnson & Johnson launch JLABS @ Washington, DC
Sadiqa Kendi, M.D., FAAP, CPST, a pediatric emergency physician at Children’s National and medical director of Safe Kids DC, is among the 2019 cohort of Bloomberg Fellows, an initiative that provides world-class training to public health professionals tackling some of the most intractable challenges facing the U.S.
The Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on June 6, 2019, announced fellows who will receive full scholarships to earn an MPH or DrPH as they tackle five U.S. health challenges: addiction and overdose, environmental challenges, obesity and the food system, risks to adolescent health and violence. Now in its third year, the largest group of fellows to date includes representatives from organizations headquartered in 24 states and the District of Columbia.
As part of her environmental challenges fellowship, Dr. Kendi will attempt to lessen the significant morbidity and mortality suffered by children, especially children of color, due to unintentional injuries. Children’s emergency department handles more than 100,000 pediatric visits per year, 1,200 of which result in hospital admission.
“The numbers are staggering: 25% of emergency department visits by kids and more than $28 billion in health care spending are associated with injuries. These preventable injuries claim the highest number of pediatric lives, and children of color and lower income families often disproportionately bear this burden,” Dr. Kendi says.
“Regrettably, I have seen the personal toll close up, and it has been sobering to hug a sobbing parent whose child clings to life after being struck by a car; to clasp the hand of a frightened child who has fallen from playground equipment and suffered a severe fracture; to see the angst written on a caregiver’s face as I lead our team in trying to save a life that easily could have been safeguarded by installing a window guard,” she adds.
Under the auspices of Safe Kids District of Columbia, Dr. Kendi is developing a one-stop Safety Center at Children’s National to provide injury prevention equipment and education to families in five focus areas: child passenger safety, home, pedestrian, sleep and sports.
Safe Kids Worldwide, the umbrella non-profit organization for Safe Kids DC, started at Children’s National and has grown to more than 400 coalitions around the world. Safe Kids DC is the local coalition that is working to address the burden of injury in local District of Columbia communities.
“I’m grateful to be named a Bloomberg Fellow because this opportunity will enable me to better understand the theories, methods of evaluation and tools for addressing the burden of injury in the District of Columbia, including how to assess and address the built environment. This training will help me to better lead my Safe Kids DC team in developing projects, outreach programs and legislative advocacy that have the potential to directly impact the communities we serve,” she adds.
As a provider with international experience, Suvankar Majumdar, M.D., joined Children’s National in August 2017 as chief of Children’s Division of Hematology within the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders. Dr. Majumdar is excited to be at Children’s National because of the opportunities for growth, cutting-edge research and continuing education that our diverse population of patients can provide clinicians.
Born in Zambia, in southern Africa, and educated in the United Kingdom, Dr. Majumdar moved to Zimbabwe to study medicine, which he considers the turning point of his career. While in medical school, Dr. Majumdar oversaw and managed the treatment of patients with HIV and other chronic illnesses and determined that blood disorders, particularly sickle cell, was where he wanted to place his focus. Since then, he has served as the Director of the Comprehensive Pediatric Sickle Cell Program as well as Director of the Hemophilia Treatment Center at the University of Mississippi and is a recognized leader in hematology and sickle cell disease. It is this expertise, as well as his dedication to research studies, that have already made him an asset to Children’s National.
Within the Division of Hematology, Children’s providers focus on treating patients with blood disorders, bleeding and clotting disorders, red blood cell disorders (such as sickle cell) and more. Since coming to Children’s National, Dr. Majumdar has experienced a tremendous amount of dedication and enthusiasm from his colleagues. “I’m excited to build on what our faculty has accomplished so far. We’re already well poised to become a national leader in hematology,” he says. “I have no doubt that we will continue to accomplish our goals through collaboration and working toward a common life-saving cause.”
One of his immediate goals for the division is to focus on bringing improved patient care and accessibility in the surrounding Washington area. Additionally, Dr. Majumdar is currently conducting two research studies for sickle cell disease. As one of his studies enters the second phase, he’s focused on seeing the impact of an intravenous citrulline, a nitric oxide booster, on patients with sickle cell disease. Another study has begun to determine if specific genetic mutations that cause prolonged QT, or irregular heartbeats in patients, cause mortality, as sickle cell patients are predisposed to cardiac episodes.
It is Dr. Majumdar’s hope that the hematology team at Children’s National will also continue training the next generation of providers to advance research, education and clinical aspects of the field. To those looking to join the specialty, Dr. Majumdar suggests keeping an open mind when it comes to collaborating with colleagues. “My dad always said to my siblings and I that ‘to break one stick is easy, but to break three sticks is harder’ and really impressed upon us that we’re stronger together,” he says. “By working together, we’re more likely to produce the results that we’re looking for.”
Being located in the nation’s capital, providers at Children’s National are accustomed to seeing a diverse array of patients. For Dr. Majumdar, this presents a unique opportunity. “Meeting and interacting with different patients and families was really appealing when I decided to come to Children’s National. The variety of cases we see in the Division of Hematology can definitely present new challenges, but it’s also more rewarding,” he says.
Working with the pediatric population is also a passion of his. “Children are resilient and tend to bounce back quickly,” Dr. Majumdar says. “As a parent, I try to empathize with treatment concerns and always treat every child as if they were my own. I’m always going to make sure it’s the best level of care possible.”
https://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Suvankar-Majumdar.jpg300400Innovation Districthttps://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/innovationdistrict_logo-1-1030x165.pngInnovation District2019-06-04 16:19:322019-06-12 15:15:31Spotlight on Suvankar Majumdar, M.D.
Fibro/adipogenic precursors (FAPs) control the onset and severity of disease in limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 2 (LGMD2B). a) Healthy and/or pre-symptomatic LGMD2B muscle contains resident FAPs. b) After myofiber injury, inflammatory cells invade and trigger FAP proliferation. c) In symptomatic LGMD2B muscle, there is a gradual accumulation of extracellular AnxA2, which prolongs the pro-inflammatory environment, causing excessive FAP proliferation. d) Blocking aberrant signaling due to AnxA2 buildup blocks FAP accumulation and thus preventing adipogenic loss of dysferlinopathic muscle. Credit: “Fibroadipogenic progenitors are responsible for muscle loss in limb girdle muscular dystrophy 2B.” Published online June 3, 2019, in Nature Communications. Marshall W. Hogarth, Aurelia Defour, Christopher Lazarski, Eduard Gallardo, Jordi Diaz Manera, Terence A. Partridge, Kanneboyina Nagaraju and Jyoti K. Jaiswal. https://rdcu.be/bFu9U.
Research led by faculty at Children’s National published online June 3, 2019, in Nature Communications shows that the sudden appearance of symptoms in limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 2 (LGMD2B) is a result of impaired communication between different cell types that facilitate repair in healthy muscle. Of particular interest are the fibro/adipogenic precursors (FAPs), cells that typically play a helpful role in regenerating muscle after injury by removing debris and enhancing the fusion of muscle cells into new myofibers.
LGMD2B is caused by mutations in the DYSF gene that impair the function of dysferlin, a protein essential for repairing injured muscle fibers. Symptoms, like difficulty climbing or running, do not appear in patients until young adulthood. This late onset has long puzzled researchers, as the cellular consequences of dysferlin’s absence are present from birth and continue through development, but do not impact patients until later in life.
The study found that in the absence of dysferlin, muscle gradually increases the expression of the protein Annexin A2 which, like dysferlin, facilitates repair of injured muscle fiber. However, increasing Annexin A2 accumulates outside the muscle fiber and drives an increase in FAPs within the muscle as well as encourages these FAPs to differentiate into adipocytes, forming fatty deposits. Shutting down Annexin A2 or blocking the adipocyte fate of FAPs using an off-the-shelf medicine arrests the fatty replacement of dysferlinopathic muscle.
“We propose a feed-forward loop in which repeated myofiber injury triggers chronic inflammation which, over time, creates an environment that promotes FAPs to accumulate and differentiate into fat. This, in turn, contributes to more myofiber damage,” says Jyoti K. Jaiswal, MSc, Ph.D., a principal investigator in the Center for Genetic Medicine Research at Children’s National and the study’s senior author.
“Adipogenic accumulation becomes the nucleating event that results in an abrupt decline in muscle function in patients. This new view of LGMD2B disease opens previously unrealized avenues to intervene,” adds Marshall Hogarth, Ph.D., the study’s lead author.
“We propose a feed-forward loop in which repeated myofiber injury triggers chronic inflammation which, over time, creates an environment that promotes FAPs to accumulate and differentiate into fat. This, in turn, contributes to more myofiber damage,” says Jyoti K. Jaiswal, MSc, Ph.D.
A research team led by Jaiswal collaborated with Eduard Gallardo and Jordi Diaz Manera, of Hospital de la Santa Creu in Barcelona, Spain, to examine muscle biopsies from people with LGMD2B who had mild to severe symptoms. They found that adipogenic deposits originate in the extracellular matrix space between muscle fibers, with the degree of accumulation tied to disease severity. They found a similar progressive increase in lipid accumulation between myofibers predicted disease severity in dysferlin-deficient experimental models. What’s more, this process can be accelerated by muscle injury, triggering increased adipogenic replacement in areas that otherwise would be occupied by muscle cells.
“Accumulation and adipogenic differentiation of FAPs is responsible for the decline in function for dysferlinopathic muscle. Reversing this could provide a therapy for LGMD2B, a devastating disease with no effective treatment,” predicts Jaiswal as the team continues research in this field.
Promising off-the-shelf drugs include batimastat, an anti-cancer drug that inhibits the extracellular matrix enzyme matrix metalloproteinase. This drug reduces FAP adipogenesis invitro and lessens injury-triggered lipid formation in vivo. In experimental models, batimastat also increases muscle function.
In addition to Jaiswal, Hogarth, Gallardo and Diaz Manera, other study co-authors include Aurelia Defour, Christopher Lazarski, Terence A. Partridge and Kanneboyina Nagaraju, all of Children’s National.
Financial support for research described in this post was provided by the Muscular Dystrophy Association under awards MDA477331 and MDA277389, the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases under award R01AR055686 and the National Institutes of Health under awards K26OD011171, R24HD050846 and P50AR060836.
https://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/sketch-of-muscle-cells.jpg300400Innovation Districthttps://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/innovationdistrict_logo-1-1030x165.pngInnovation District2019-06-03 15:00:012019-06-04 16:14:18Losing muscle to fat: misdirected fate of a multipotent stem cell drives LGMD2B
Neurologists who attended the 2019 Pediatric Neurology Update received a broad look at autism spectrum disorders, ranging from biology to clinical care and advocacy.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) took center stage for the afternoon sessions of the annual Pediatric Neurology Update in April. The meeting, hosted by the Center for Neuroscience and Behavioral Medicine at Children’s National Health System, brings together 150-plus pediatric neurologists each year to discuss critical research and clinical care of pediatric neurological conditions.
“We know that the brain is different in autism, but many times we continue to define autism by behavioral traits,” Dr. Kenworthy told the crowd in her introduction. “Sitting between the brain and behavior often is cognition – how do you understand your world and interpret it?”
The afternoon’s presentations were organized to provide the audience with a clear picture of many facets of ASD research and treatment. Highlights included:
Joshua Corbin, Ph.D., director of the Center for Neuroscience Research, offered “New Insights into the Neurobiologic Underpinnings of Autism,” which mapped out some of the biological mechanisms of autism.
Adelaide Robb, M.D., and Dr. Kenworthy presented current clinical care outlines, with Dr. Robb focusing on pharmacological therapies and Dr. Kenworthy sharing successful strategies to improve executive functioning and day to day task management for school-aged children.
Attendees also received a taste of two current “hot topics” in autism research and care:
Kevin Pelphrey, Ph.D., presented recent findings on “Gender Differences in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Girls with Autism” calling attention to the fact that the current diagnostic standards may not capture some female-associated phenotypes of ASD.
Julia Bascom of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network brought the autistic person’s point of view to the table via her presentation: “Autism: Society and Government Challenges and Solutions,” which focused on her organization’s efforts to improve inclusivity in advocacy and research, which she sums up as, “Nothing about us without us.”
The session concluded with a real-world focused “Autism-Friendly Hospital Roundtable,” of six panelists from the clinical, advocacy, community and technology fields, who are all involved in hands-on practices to improve medical experiences for autistic children and adults.
CASD’s Yetta Myrick talked about her work to engage families of autistic children in discussions of research and clinical care programs, including the start of CASD’s first-ever Stakeholder Advisory Board.
Julia Bascom talked about some of the less-often discussed challenges for many autistic people who seek medical services.
Kathleen Atmore, Psy.D., and Eileen Walters, MSN, RN, CPN, provided an overview of Beyond the Spectrum, the clinical service at Children’s National that coaches providers and families in techniques to reduce the stress of routine medical visits for patients with autism and other developmental disabilities.
Amy Kratchman, director of the LEND Family Collaboration at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, talked about some of the autism-friendly strategies underway at her institution.
Michael O’Neil, JD, MBA, founder and CEO of the GetWell Network, Inc., previewed how GetWell and Children’s National are partnering on a new tool that harnesses app technology to bring better information to autistic children and their families after a new autism diagnosis.
Vijay Ravindran, CEO and co-founder at Floreo, demonstrated how it might be possible to reduce stress and create a calm peaceful autism-friendly environment even in the busiest of waiting rooms, by allowing the patient to escape via virtual reality.
The roundtable showcased how Children’s National and other health care institutions are using evidence-based strategies to improve medical care experiences for autistic people and their families. Ideally any provider, including pediatric neurologists, who cares for people from the autism community, can incorporate any or all of these strategies as a way to meet the unique needs of this patient population.
The content was so timely and relevant to the audience that many attendees stayed past the official end of the meeting to continue discussing best practices with the panelists and each other.
https://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Pediatric-Neurology-Update-Attendees.jpg300400Innovation Districthttps://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/innovationdistrict_logo-1-1030x165.pngInnovation District2019-06-03 14:25:452024-06-05 12:15:50Pediatric neurologists get a primer on the state of ASD research and care
Fewer than 60% of young women diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the emergency department fill prescriptions for antimicrobial therapy to treat these conditions, according to a research letter published online May 28, 2019, by JAMA Pediatrics.
Adolescents make up nearly half of the people diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections each year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, untreated sexually transmitted diseases in women can cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), an infection of the reproductive organs that can complicate getting pregnant in the future.
“We were astonished to find that teenagers’ rates of filling STI prescriptions were so low,” 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. “Our findings demonstrate the imperative need to identify innovative methods to improve treatment adherence for this high-risk population.”
The retrospective cohort study, conducted at two emergency departments affiliated with a large, urban, tertiary care children’s hospital, enrolled adolescents aged 13 to 19 who were prescribed antimicrobial treatment from Jan. 1, 2016, to Dec. 31, 2017, after being diagnosed with PID or testing positive for chlamydia.
Of 696 emergency department visits for diagnosed STIs, 208 teenagers received outpatient prescriptions for antimicrobial treatments. Only 54.1% of those prescriptions were filled.
“Teenagers may face a number of hurdles when it comes to STI treatment, including out-of-pocket cost, access to transportation and confidentiality concerns,” Dr. Goyal adds.
Future studies will attempt to identify barriers to filling prescriptions in order to inform development of targeted interventions based in the emergency department that promote adherence to STI treatment.
In addition to Dr. Goyal, study co-authors include Lead Author, Alexandra Lieberman, BA, The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences; and co-authors Gia M. Badolato, MPH, and Jennifer Tran, PA-C, MPH, both of Children’s National.
https://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Pills.jpg300400Innovation Districthttps://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/innovationdistrict_logo-1-1030x165.pngInnovation District2019-05-29 09:20:462024-05-29 09:12:28Fewer than 60% of young women diagnosed with STIs in emergency departments fill scripts
Testicular tissue samples obtained from 189 males who were facing procedures that could imperil fertility were cryopreserved at one university, proving the feasibility of centralized processing and freezing of testicular tissue obtained from academic medical centers, including Children’s National, scattered around the world.
“It’s not surprising that the University of Pittsburgh would record the highest number of samples over the eight-year period (51 patients), given its role as the central processing facility for our recruiting network of academic medical centers,” says Michael Hsieh, M.D., Ph.D., director of transitional urology at Children’s National. “Children’s National recruited the third-highest number of patients, which really speaks to the level of collaboration I have with Jeff Dome’s team and their commitment to thinking about the whole patient and longer-term issues like fertility.”
An estimated 2,000 U.S. boys and young men each year receive treatments or have cancers or blood disorders that place them at risk for infertility. While older youths who have undergone puberty can bank their sperm prior to undergoing sterilizing doses of chemotherapy or radiation, there have been scant fertility preservation options for younger boys. However, some older adolescents and young men are too sick or stressed to bank sperm. For patients with no sperm to bank or who are too sick or stressed to bank sperm, the experimental procedure of freezing testicular tissue in anticipation that future cell- or tissue-based therapies can generate sperm is the only option.
Recent research in experimental models indicates that such testicular tissue biopsies contain stem cells, blank slate cells, hinting at the potential of generating sperm from biopsied tissue.
“This study demonstrates that undifferentiated stem and progenitor spermatogonia may be recovered from the testicular tissues of patients who are in the early stages of their treatment and have not yet received an ablative dose of therapy. The function of these spermatogonia was not tested,” writes lead author Hanna Valli-Pulaski, Ph.D., research assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues in a study published online May 21, 2019, in Human Reproduction.
Right now, hematologists and oncologists discuss future treatment options with patients and families, as well as possible long-term side effects, including infertility. At Children’s National, they also mention the ongoing fertility preservation study and encourage families to speak with Dr. Hsieh. He meets with families, explains the study goals – which include determining better ways to freeze and thaw tissue and separating malignant cells from normal cells – what’s known about experimental fertility preservation and what remains unknown. Roughly half of patients decide to enroll.
“This study is unique in that there is definitely a potential direct patient benefit,” Dr. Hsieh adds. “One of the reasons the study is compelling is that it presents a message of hope to the families. It’s a message of survivorship: We’re optimistic we can help your child get through this and think about long-term issues, like having their own families.”
In this phase of the study, testicular tissue was collected from centers in the U.S. and Israel from January 2011 to November 2018 and cryopreserved. Patients designated 25% of the tissue sample to be used for the research study; 75 percent remains stored in liquid nitrogen at temperatures close to absolute zero for the patient’s future use. The fertility preservation patients ranged from 5 months old to 34 years old, with an average age of 7.9 years.
Thirty-nine percent of patients had started medical treatment prior requesting fertility preservation. Sixteen percent received non-alkylating chemotherapy while 23% received alkylating chemotherapy, which directly damages the DNA of cancer cells.
The research team found that the number of undifferentiated spermatogonia per seminiferous tubule increase steadily with age until about age 11, then rise sharply.
“We recommend that all patients be counseled and referred for fertility preservation before beginning medical treatments known to cause infertility. Because the decision to participate may be delayed, it is encouraging that we were able to recover undifferentiated spermatogonia from the testes of patients already in the early stages of chemotherapy treatments,” Dr. Hsieh says.
In addition to Dr. Hsieh, study co-authors include lead author, H. Valli-Pulaski, K.A. Peters, K. Gassei, S.R. Steimer, M. Sukhwani, B.P. Hermann, L. Dwomor, S. David, A.P. Fayomi, S.K. Munyoki, T. Chu, R. Chaudhry, G.M. Cannon, P.J. Fox, T.M. Jaffe, J.S. Sanfilippo, M.N. Menke and senior author, K.E. Orwig, all of University of Pittsburgh; E. Lunenfeld, M. Abofoul-Azab and M. Huleihel, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; L.S. Sender, J. Messina and L.M. Klimpel, CHOC Children’s Hospital; Y. Gosiengfiao, and E.E. Rowell, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago; C.F. Granberg, Mayo Clinic; P.P. Reddy, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; and J.I. Sandlow, Medical College of Wisconsin.
Financial support for the research covered in this post was provided by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development under awards HD061289 and HD092084; Scaife Foundation; Richard King Mellon Foundation; University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation and Kahn Foundation.
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Stephen Monaco with his brother before a life-changing incident in 2001.
Jana and Tom Monaco have four children and two, Stephen and Caroline, were born with isovaleric acidemia (IVA) and secondary carnitine deficiency, a rare metabolic disorder. This genetic condition prevents the body from producing enzymes to break down the amino acid leucine, found in many proteins – from nuts and beans to chicken and fish. If undetected, the condition, which affects about one in 250,000 children, can be fatal. IVA can also lead to autism or severe brain damage. Fortunately, newborn screenings in every state now detect most IVA cases.
Eighteen years ago, a series of events happened with Stephen, age 3.5 at the time, which led to his diagnosis of having IVA and secondary carnitine deficiency. He celebrated his grandmother’s birthday with a family dinner on Memorial Day. The next day he woke up with symptoms of a stomach virus, which the family treated as such. The following morning he didn’t wake up at all. Jana went to his room to check on him and realized something was wrong. She called an ambulance and within 24 hours Stephen fell into a coma in her arms. He was immediately put on life support at a Virginia hospital.
Amy Lewanda, M.D., a geneticist, and Craig Futterman, M.D., an intensivist, both of whom now work at Children’s National Health System, delivered news about the condition: IVA is an inability for the IVD gene to create enzymes to break down protein. Within a 24- to 48-hour period, Stephen’s body flooded with isovaleric acid it couldn’t break down. Once the acid reached his brain he was paralyzed. Jana mentions you could find him in the emergency department of the hospital by following the odor: He reeked of ketones and isovaleric acid, which accumulated in his blood and body tissue. His blood glucose level was so low that he was practically in a diabetic coma.
Jana and Stephen Monaco, at a charity golf tournament established in Stephen’s honor to raise awareness about and support for isovaleric acidemia (IVA).
If the Monaco family was able to get his blood checked locally at the hospital – which the clinicians did not yet have the ability to do because this condition is so rare – they may have been able to receive an early diagnosis, enabling them to intervene in infancy, as they did with their youngest daughter, Caroline.
After the diagnosis, in hindsight, Jana and Tom recognized Stephen’s symptoms as a toddler: picky eating, anemia, rejection of protein-rich foods, such as favoring jelly over peanut butter on a PB&J sandwich, opting for easy carbs, since they are easier for those with IVA to process, and breastfeeding longer, since breast milk is lower in protein. He had a peculiar odor trailing from his diaper, a common symptom of this condition. They also remembered he had a harder time recovering from a stomach virus, which left him weak and floppy, compared to one of his brothers, who had the same flu but bounced back faster. As parents, they did everything they could to promote healthy growth and development for their children – from properly installing car seats to staying up-to-date on vaccines and enrolling everyone in activities, like Little League. They only wished they could have detected this condition earlier.
A second chance arrived six months after Stephen was diagnosed with IVA: Jana and Tom learned they were pregnant with Caroline. From studying Stephen’s condition, they knew Caroline had a 25 percent chance of having IVA and secondary carnitine deficiency. (Jana and Tom are recessive carriers for a mutated IVD gene, but remain asymptomatic.) They scheduled an amniocentesis, a prenatal test that provides information about a baby’s health from sample amniotic fluid, which can diagnose genetic defects and fetal infections. Caroline was just 16 weeks in utero, but abnormal metabolites from the amniotic fluid sample confirmed she had IVA and secondary carnitine deficiency.
Caroline, a healthy teenager with IVA, is an example of the benefits of newborn screenings and early-life medical interventions.
Having advance knowledge about the condition enabled doctors and geneticists to create a plan for her delivery, which made a difference between her long-term prognosis and Stephen’s. After birth, she was transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s National. She was fed a formula that prevented excess isovaleric acid build-up, part of an hour-by-hour protocol to ensure she stayed healthy. Caroline is now 16. She plays the viola in her school orchestra, rides horses and excels in school.
When Stephen was born, the state of Virginia, where the Monaco family lives, screened for eight prenatal conditions, such as PKU, a rare but more common condition. The state now screens for 31 conditions, thanks in part to Jana, Stephen and Caroline. The list grows as research evolves. Jana started advocating for these efforts in Richmond and on Capitol Hill when Caroline was 2. Her approach: Take Stephen and Caroline to her state capitol and to the U.S. Capitol to push for statewide newborn screenings – visually showing the same condition, but with two very different outcomes. How could anyone say no?
She worked with the Virginia Genetics Advisory Council and with the Health and Human Services Secretary Advisory Committee to pass the legislation, which helped detect other organic acidemias – inherited conditions that prevent babies from breaking down amino acids found in protein, creating potentially toxic situations, similar to Stephen’s. They advocated for adding other conditions to the panel, like severe combined immunodeficiency, commonly referred to as “bubble boy” syndrome. Stephan was the only newborn screening advocate in attendance with a disability. Now all 50 states have implemented these screenings.
The Monaco family raised $100,000 for the genetics division and ongoing IVA research at Children’s National Health System.
The family isn’t done yet. On Oct. 26, Stephen will celebrate his 22nd birthday and a fifth-annual golf tournament, created in his honor, to raise awareness about and support for IVA and similar conditions. The Monaco family started this tradition in 2015 on Stephen’s 18th birthday and have raised $100,000 for the genetics division at Children’s National. They hope Stephen’s legacy will leave others with a message they keep framed in their Virginia home: Learn from yesterday, live for today and hope for tomorrow.
They educate Caroline along the way, noting the annual golf tournament and their advocacy supports ongoing IVA research and care – ensuring that she and others with these rare metabolic conditions continue to live a long, healthy life, echoing their longstanding partnership with Children’s National to help children grow up stronger.
https://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Jana-and-Stephen.png300400Innovation Districthttps://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/innovationdistrict_logo-1-1030x165.pngInnovation District2019-05-24 07:00:362021-03-02 10:16:44Prenatal screening: the story of two siblings
Children’s National is among five awardees sharing $10 million in funding under Fannie Mae’s Sustainable Communities Innovation Challenge: Healthy Affordable Housing, a national competition to identify innovative ideas to help children and families enjoy safer homes. Fannie Mae made the funding announcement on May 21, 2019.
Children’s funding will underwrite a pilot program to use smartphones to enable virtual home visits, leveraging the skills of Children’s pediatric asthma specialists, health educators and community housing remediation specialists who will video conference with families in the home to identify potential housing asthma triggers.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 12 children and adolescents (6 million) have asthma, and one in six children with asthma visit the emergency department each year. In Washington, D.C., substandard housing can play an outsized role in triggering asthma exacerbations. Asthma-related hospital visits are 12 times higher in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, compared with affluent ZIP codes.
Working with community partners, Children’s faculty aim to eliminate asthma triggers right at the source, improving children’s well-being and creating healthier homes.
Right now during in-home visits, staff look for holes under kitchen sinks and gaps in the walls or flooring where pests and vermin might enter as well as leaks where mold and mildew can bloom. These systematic visits yield detailed notes to best direct resources to remediate those housing woes. The in-person visits however, are labor intensive and require delicate diplomacy to first open doors then to point out potential asthma triggers without coming off as judgmental.
“The beauty of our innovation is that residents can show us these same problematic locations using their smartphones, facilitating our efforts to target resources for that household. It’s a win for Children’s families because eliminating asthma triggers in the home means our kids will miss fewer school days, improving their lives and overall health,” says Ankoor Y. Shah, M.D., MBA, MPH, medical director for Children’s IMPACT DC Asthma Clinic.
Children’s collaborative project includes a number of partners, including:
BreatheDC, a non-profit that fights all forms of lung disease
Children’s Telemedicine, which delivers health care remotely using technology.
Dr. Shah says the project will start in July 2019 with the pilot of virtual home visits starting in early 2020. This proof-of-concept model will hopefully be able to be replicated in other cities across the country.
Alexandra M. Sims, M.D., FAAP, general academic pediatrics fellow at Children’s National, tells newly minted George Mason social sciences graduates the concrete and abstract skills they learned during their collegiate experience are exceedingly valuable.
As a 10-year-old growing up in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, lip syncing with friends as they pretended to be Destiny’s Child, Alexandra M. Sims, M.D., FAAP, predicted her future: She would become a doctor.
“Ten is a really funny age,” Dr. Sims told members of the 2019 graduating class from George Mason University College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the school and department from which she received her undergraduate degree in Anthropology. “I was old enough to feel compelled to contribute to the world meaningfully, but too young to know the weight of this undertaking. I was old enough to be intrigued by the science of the human body, but too young to be intimidated by the fact that there were no doctors in my family.”
Dr. Sims’ youngest sister, Bria, was born four weeks premature and died a few weeks after birth. The sting of that tragedy instilled in her a commitment to serve others and informed a lifelong passion to help society’s most marginalized.
Ten years after graduating George Mason herself, she invited this year’s newly minted graduates to distill their college experience into three terms: who, how and why:
Who means the family members and mentors who helped them enter college and persevere toward graduation.
How is their plan to change the world. The general academics pediatrics fellow at Children’s National asks kids about their unique superpower during visits to the primary care clinic at Children’s Health Center Anacostia. “I get a range of responses, and some of them are quite funny,” she told 800 social sciences graduates gathered for their degree celebration. “Some really surprise me in other ways. ‘I want to be kind.’ ‘I want to help people.’ ‘I want to take care of my parents.’ ”
Why is the reason they continue to do what they’re doing. For Dr. Sims, that’s service and mitigating health disparities, a mission that has led her to travel around the globe conducting HIV/AIDS outreach and building coalitions near and far. Her current work is domestic, as she seeks advocates for at-risk communities through health services research.
“So, come back to these when you’re feeling unsure or uneasy: your WHO, your HOW and your WHY. Know that your time here at Mason is time well spent, and that the skills that you’ve gained, both the concrete and the abstract, are exceedingly valuable,” she advised the group.
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“Overall, children who receive kidney transplants had minimal concerns about quality of life after their operation. While it’s comforting that most pediatric patients had no significant problems, the range of quality of life scores indicate that some patients had remarkable difficulties,” says Kaushalendra Amatya, Ph.D., a pediatric psychologist in Nephrology and Cardiology at Children’s National and the study’s lead author.
After receiving a kidney transplant, children may experience quality-of-life difficulties that underscore the importance of screening transplant recipients for psychosocial function, according to Children’s research presented May 4, 2019, during the 10th Congress of the International Pediatric Transplant Association.
About 2,000 children and adolescents younger than 18 are on the national waiting list for an organ transplant, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, with most infants and school-aged children waiting for a heart, liver or kidney and most children older than 11 waiting for a kidney or liver. In 2018, 1,895 U.S. children received transplants.
The research team at Children’s National wanted to hear directly from kids about their quality of life after kidney transplant in order to tailor timely interventions to children. Generally, recipients of kidney transplants have reported impaired quality of life compared with healthy peers, with higher mental health difficulties, disrupted sleep patterns and lingering pain.
The Children’s team measured general health-related quality of life using a 23-item PedsQL Generic Core module and measured transplant-related quality of life using the PedsQL- Transplant Module. The forms, which can be used for patients as young as 2, take about five to 10 minutes to complete and were provided to the child, the parent or the primary care giver – as appropriate – during a follow-up visit after the transplant.
Thirty-three patient-parent dyads completed the measures, with an additional 25 reports obtained from either the patient or the parent. The patients’ mean age was 14.2; 41.4% were female.
“Overall, children who receive kidney transplants had minimal concerns about quality of life after their operation. While it’s comforting that most pediatric patients had no significant problems, the range of quality of life scores indicate that some patients had remarkable difficulties,” says Kaushalendra Amatya, Ph.D., a pediatric psychologist in Nephrology and Cardiology at Children’s National and the study’s lead author.
When the study team reviewed reports given by parents, they found their descriptions sometimes differed in striking ways from the children’s answers.
“Parents report lower values on emotional functioning, social functioning and total core quality of life, indicating that parents perceive their children as having more difficulties across these specific domains than the patients’ own self reports do,” Amatya adds.
10th Congress of the International Pediatric Transplant Association presentation
“An exploration of health-related quality of life in pediatric renal transplant recipients.”
Kaushalendra Amatya, Ph.D., pediatric psychologist and lead author; Christy Petyak, CPNP-PC, nurse practitioner and co-author; and Asha Moudgil, M.D., medical director, transplant and senior author.
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Emerging evidence links dnDSA with increased risk of accelerated systemic hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) and major cardiac events in adult organ transplant recipients. However, this phenomenon has not been studied extensively in children who receive kidney transplants.
Children who developed anti-human leukocyte antibodies against their donor kidney, known as de novo donor-specific antibodies (dnDSA), after kidney transplant were more likely to experience carotid intima-media thickening (CIMT) than those without these antibodies, according to preliminary research presented May 7, 2019, during the 10th Congress of the International Pediatric Transplant Association.
dnDSA play a key role in the survival of a transplanted organ. While human leukocyte antibodies protect the body from infection, dnDSA are a major cause of allograft loss. CIMT measures the thickness of the intima and media layers of the carotid artery and can serve as an early marker of cardiac disease.
Emerging evidence links dnDSA with increased risk of accelerated systemic hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) and major cardiac events in adult organ transplant recipients. However, this phenomenon has not been studied extensively in children who receive kidney transplants.
To investigate the issue, Children’s researchers enrolled 38 children who had received kidney transplants and matched them by race with 20 healthy children. They measured their CIMT, blood pressure and lipids 18 months and 30 months after their kidney transplants. They monitored dnDSA at 18 months and 30 months after kidney transplant. The transplant recipients’ median age was 11.3 years, 50 percent were African American, and 21% developed dnDSA.
“In this prospective controlled cohort study, we compared outcomes among patients who developed dnDSA with transplant recipients who did not develop dnDSA and with race-matched healthy kids,” says Kristen Sgambat, Ph.D., a pediatric renal dietitian at Children’s National who was the study’s lead author. “Children with dnDSA after transplant had 5.5% thicker CIMT than those who did not have dnDSA. Being African American was also independently associated with a 9.2% increase in CIMT among transplant recipients.”
Additional studies will need to be conducted in larger numbers of pediatric kidney transplant recipients to verify this preliminary association, Sgambat adds.
10th Congress of the International Pediatric Transplant Association presentation:
“Circulating de novo donor-specific antibodies and carotid intima-media thickness in pediatric kidney transplant recipients.”
Kristen Sgambat, Ph.D., pediatric renal dietitian and study lead author; Sarah Clauss, M.D., cardiologist and study co-author; and Asha Moudgil, M.D., Medical Director, Transplant and senior study author, all of Children’s National.
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Segmentation of a preterm brain T2-weighted MRI image at 30 gestational weeks [green=cortical grey matter; blue=white matter; grey=deep grey matter; cyan=lateral ventricle; purple=cerebellum; orange=brainstem; red=hippocampus; yellow=cerebrospinal fluid].
Dietary lipids, already an important source of energy for tiny preemies, also provide a much-needed brain boost by significantly increasing global brain volume as well as increasing volume in regions involved in motor activities and memory, according to research presented during the Pediatric Academic Societies 2019 Annual Meeting.
“Compared with macronutrients like carbohydrates and proteins, lipid intake during the first month of life is associated with increased overall and regional brain volume for micro-preemies,” says Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D., director of MRI Research of the Developing Brain at Children’s National and senior author. “Using non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging, we see increased volume in the cerebellum by 2 weeks of age. And at four weeks of life, lipids increase total brain volume and boost regional brain volume in the cerebellum, amygdala-hippocampus and brainstem.”
The cerebellum is involved in virtually all physical movement and enables coordination and balance. The amygdala processes and stores short-term memories. The hippocampus manages emotion and mood. And the brainstem acts like a router, passing messages from the brain to the rest of the body, as well as enabling essential functions like breathing, a steady heart rate and swallowing.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 10 U.S. babies is born preterm, or before 37 weeks gestation. Regions of the brain that play vital roles in complex cognitive and motor activities experience exponential growth late in pregnancy, making the developing brains of preterm infants particularly vulnerable to injury and impaired growth.
Children’s research faculty examined the impact of lipid intake in the first month of life on brain volumes for very low birth weight infants, who weighed 1,500 grams or less at birth. These micro-preemies are especially vulnerable to growth failure and neurocognitive impairment after birth.
The team enrolled 68 micro-preemies who were 32 weeks gestational age and younger when they were admitted to Children’s neonatal intensive care unit during their first week of life. They measured cumulative macronutrients – carbohydrates, proteins, lipids and calories – consumed by these newborns at 2 and 4 weeks of life. Over years, Limperopoulos’ lab has amassed a large database of babies who were born full-term; this data provides unprecedented insights into normal brain development and will help to advance understanding of brain development in high-risk preterm infants.
“Even after controlling for average weight gain and other health conditions, lipid intake was positively associated with cerebellar and brainstem volumes in very low birthweight preterm infants,” adds Katherine M. Ottolini, the study’s lead author.
According to Limperopoulos, Children’s future research will examine the optimal timing and volume of lipids to boost neurodevelopment for micro-preemies.
“Early lipid intake improves brain growth in premature infants.”
Saturday, April 27, 2019, 1:15-2:30 p.m. (EST)
Katherine M. Ottolini, lead author; Nickie Andescavage, M.D., Attending, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine and co-author; Kushal Kapse, research and development staff engineer and co-author; and Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D., director of MRI Research of the Developing Brain and senior author, all of Children’s National.
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In newborns with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), lower heart rate variability correlates with autonomic manifestations of stress shortly after birth, underscoring the value of this biomarker, according to Children’s research presented during the Pediatric Academic Societies 2019 Annual Meeting.
Tethered to an array of machines that keep their bodies nourished, warm and alive, newborns with health issues can’t speak. But Children’s research teams are tapping into what the machinery itself says, looking for insights into which vulnerable infants are most in need of earlier intervention.
“Heart rate variability – or the variation between heartbeats – is a sign of health. Our autonomic nervous system constantly sends signals to adjust our heart rate under normal conditions. We can measure heart rate variability non-invasively, providing a way to detect potential problems with the autonomic nervous system as a sensitive marker of health in critically ill newborns,” says An N. Massaro, M.D., co-Director of Research for the Division of Neonatology at Children’s National, and the study’s senior author. “We’re looking for validated markers of brain injury in babies with HIE, and our study helps to support heart rate variability as one such valuable physiological biomarker.”
In most newborns, the autonomic nervous system reliably and automatically receives information about the body and the outside world and, in response, controls essential functions like blood pressure, body temperature, how quickly the baby breathes and how rapidly the newborn’s heart beats. The sympathetic part stimulates body processes, while the parasympathetic part inhibits body processes. When the nervous system’s internal auto-pilot falters, babies can suffer.
The Children’s team enrolled infants with HIE in the prospective, observational study. (HIE is brain damage that occurs with full-term babies who experience insufficient blood and oxygen flow to the brain around the time they are born.) Fifteen percent had severe encephalopathy. Mean age of babies in the observational study was 38.9 weeks gestation. Their median Apgar score at five minutes was 3; the 0-9 Apgar range indicates how ready newborns are for the rigors of life outside the womb.
The team analyzed heart rate variability metrics for three time periods:
The first 24 to 27 hours of life
The first three hours after babies undergoing therapeutic cooling were rewarmed and
The first three hours after babies’ body temperature had returned to normal.
They correlated the relationship between heart rate variability for 68 infants during at least one of these time periods with the stress z-score from the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale. The scale is a standardized assessment of newborn’s neurobehavioral integrity. The stress summary score indicates a newborn’s overall stress response, and six test items specifically relate to autonomic function.
“Alpha exponent and root mean square in short timescales, root mean square in long timescales, as well as low and high frequency powers positively correlated with stress scores and, even after adjusting for covariates, remained independently associated at 24 hours,” says Allie Townsend, the study’s lead author.
“Heart rate variability (HRV) measures of autonomic nervous system (ANS) function relates to neonatal neurobehavioral manifestations of stress in newborn with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE).”
“We saw long-term cerebellar white matter alterations in male experimental models, and behavioral testing revealed social impairments and increased repetitive behaviors, two hallmark features of ASD,” says Claire-Marie Vacher, Ph.D., lead study author.
Allopregnanolone (ALLO), a hormone made by the placenta late in pregnancy, is such a potent neurosteroid that disrupting its steady supply to the developing fetus can leave it vulnerable to brain injuries associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to Children’s research presented during the Pediatric Academic Societies 2019 Annual Meeting.
In order to more effectively treat vulnerable babies, the Children’s research team first had to tease out what goes wrong in the careful choreography that is pregnancy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 10 babies is born preterm, before 37 weeks of gestation. Premature birth is a major risk factor for ASD.
The placenta is an essential and understudied organ that is shared by the developing fetus and the pregnant mother, delivering oxygen, glucose and nutrients and ferrying out waste products. The placenta also delivers ALLO, a progesterone derivative, needed to ready the developing fetal brain for life outside the womb.
ALLO ramps up late in gestation. When babies are born prematurely, their supply of ALLO stops abruptly. That occurs at the same time the cerebellum – a brain region essential for motor coordination, posture, balance and social cognition– typically undergoes a dramatic growth spurt.
“Our experimental model demonstrates that losing placental ALLO alters cerebellar development, including white matter development,” says Anna Penn, M.D., Ph.D., a neonatologist in the divisions of Neonatology and Fetal Medicine, and a developmental neuroscientist at Children’s National. “Cerebellar white matter development occurs primarily after babies are born, so connecting a change in placental function during pregnancy with lingering impacts on later brain development is a particularly striking result.”
The research team created a novel experimental model in which the gene encoding the enzyme responsible for producing ALLO is deleted in the placenta. They compared these preclinical models with a control group and performed whole brain imaging and RNAseq gene expression analyses for both groups.
“We saw long-term cerebellar white matter alterations in male experimental models, and behavioral testing revealed social impairments and increased repetitive behaviors, two hallmark features of ASD,” says Claire-Marie Vacher, Ph.D., lead study author. “These male-specific outcomes parallel the increased risk of brain injury and ASD we see in human babies born prematurely.”
ALLO binds to specific GABA receptors, which control most inhibitory signaling in the nervous system.
“Our findings provide a new way to frame poor placental function: Subtle but significant changes in utero may set in motion neurodevelopmental disorders that children experience later in life,” adds Dr. Penn, the study’s senior author. “Future directions for our research could include identifying new targets in the placenta or brain that could be amenable to hormone supplementation, opening the potential for earlier treatment for high-risk fetuses.”
“Placental allopregnanolone loss alters postnatal cerebellar development and function.”
Sunday, April 28, 2019, 5:15 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. (EST)
Claire-Marie Vacher, Ph.D., lead author; Jackie Salzbank, co-author; Helene Lacaille, co-author; Dana Bakalar, co-author; Jiaqi O’Reilly, co-author; and Anna Penn, M.D., Ph.D., a neonatologist in the divisions of Neonatology and Fetal Medicine, developmental neuroscientist and senior study author.
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“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
“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.”
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.
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“Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a non-invasive imaging technique that describes the chemical composition of specific brain structures, enables us to measure metabolites that may play a critical role for growth and explain what makes breastfeeding beneficial for newborns’ developing brains,” says Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D.
Micro-preemies who primarily consume breast milk have significantly higher levels of metabolites important for brain growth and development, according to sophisticated imaging conducted by an interdisciplinary research team at Children’s National.
“Our previous research established that vulnerable preterm infants who are fed breast milk early in life have improved brain growth and neurodevelopmental outcomes. It was unclear what makes breastfeeding so beneficial for newborns’ developing brains,” says Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D., director of MRI Research of the Developing Brain at Children’s National. “Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a non-invasive imaging technique that describes the chemical composition of specific brain structures, enables us to measure metabolites essential for growth and answer that lingering question.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 10 U.S. infants is born preterm. The Children’s research team presented their findings during the Pediatric Academic Societies 2019 Annual Meeting.
The research-clinicians enrolled babies who were very low birthweight (less than 1,500 grams) and 32 weeks gestational age or younger at birth when they were admitted to Children’s neonatal intensive care unit in the first week of life. The team gathered data from the right frontal white matter and the cerebellum – a brain region that enables people to maintain balance and proper muscle coordination and that supports high-order cognitive functions.
Each chemical has its own a unique spectral fingerprint. The team generated light signatures for key metabolites and calculated the quantity of each metabolite. Of note:
Cerebral white matter spectra showed significantly greater levels of inositol (a molecule similar to glucose) for babies fed breast milk, compared with babies fed formula.
Cerebellar spectra had significantly greater creatine levels for breastfed babies compared with infants fed formula.
And the percentage of days infants were fed breast milk was associated with significantly greater levels of both creatine and choline, a water soluble nutrient.
“Key metabolite levels ramp up during the times babies’ brains experience exponential growth,” says Katherine M. Ottolini, the study’s lead author. “Creatine facilitates recycling of ATP, the cell’s energy currency. Seeing greater quantities of this metabolite denotes more rapid changes and higher cellular maturation. Choline is a marker of cell membrane turnover; when new cells are generated, we see choline levels rise.”
Already, Children’s National leverages an array of imaging options that describe normal brain growth, which makes it easier to spot when fetal or neonatal brain development goes awry, enabling earlier intervention and more effective treatment. “Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy may serve as an important additional tool to advance our understanding of how breastfeeding boosts neurodevelopment for preterm infants,” Limperopoulos adds.
“Improved cerebral and cerebellar metabolism in breast milk-fed VLBW infants.”
Monday, April 29, 2019, 3:30–3:45 p.m. (EST)
Katherine M. Ottolini, lead author; Nickie Andescavage, M.D., Attending, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine and co-author; Kushal Kapse, research and development staff engineer and co-author; Sudeepta Basu, M.D., neonatologist and co-author; and Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D., director of MRI Research of the Developing Brain and senior author, all of Children’s National.
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“This data support our hypothesis that a panel of biomarkers – not a one-time test for a single biomarker – is needed to adequately determine the risk and timing of brain injury for babies with HIE,” says An N. Massaro, M.D.
Measuring a number of biomarkers over time that are produced as the body responds to inflammation and injury may help to pinpoint newborns who are more vulnerable to suffering lasting brain injury due to disrupted oxygen delivery and blood flow, according to research presented during the Pediatric Academic Societies 2019 Annual Meeting.
Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) happens when blood and oxygen flow are disrupted around the time of birth and is a serious birth complication for full-term infants. To lessen the chance of these newborns suffering permanent brain injury, affected infants undergo therapeutic cooling, which temporarily lowers their body temperatures.
“Several candidate blood biomarkers have been investigated in HIE but we still don’t have one in clinical use. We need to understand how these markers change over time before we can use them to direct care in patients,” says An N. Massaro, M.D., co-director of the Neonatal Neurocritical Care Program at Children’s National and the study’s senior author. “The newborns’ bodies sent out different ‘help’ signals that we detected in their bloodstream, and the markers had strikingly different time courses. A panel of plasma biomarkers has the potential to help us identify infants most in need of additional interventions, and to help us understand the most optimal timing for those interventions.”
Past research has keyed in on inflammatory cytokines and Tau protein as potential biomarkers of brain injury for infants with HIE who are undergoing therapeutic cooling. The research team led by Children’s faculty wanted to gauge which time periods to measure such biomarkers circulating in newborns’ bloodstreams. They enrolled 85 infants with moderate or severe HIE and tapped unused blood specimens that had been collected as cooling began, as well as 12, 24, 72 and 96 hours later. The infants’ mean gestational age was 38.7 weeks, their mean birth weight was about 7 pounds (3.2 kilograms), and 19% had severe brain disease (encephalopathy).
Cytokines – chemicals like Interleukin (IL) 6, 8 and 10 that regulate how the body responds to infection, inflammation and trauma – peaked in the first 24 hours of cooling for most of the newborns. However, the highest measure of Tau protein for the majority of newborns was during or after the baby’s temperature was restored to normal.
“After adjusting for clinical severity of encephalopathy and five-minute Apgar scores, IL-6, IL-8 and IL-10 predicted adverse outcomes, like severe brain injury or death, as therapeutic hypothermia began. By contrast, Tau protein measurements predicted adverse outcomes during and after the infants were rewarmed,” Dr. Massaro says.
IL-6 and IL-8 proteins are pro-inflammatory cytokines while IL-10 is considered anti-inflammatory. These chemicals are released as a part of the immune response to brain injury. Tau proteins are abundant in nerve cells and stabilize microtubules.
“This data support our hypothesis that a panel of biomarkers – not a one-time test for a single biomarker – is needed to adequately determine the risk and timing of brain injury for babies with HIE,” she adds.
“Serial plasma biomarkers of brain injury in infants with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) treated with therapeutic hypothermia (TH).”
Saturday, April 27, 2019, 6 p.m. (EST)
Meaghan McGowan, lead author; Alexandra C. O’Kane, co-author; Gilbert Vezina, M.D., director, Neuroradiology Program and co-author; Tae Chang, M.D., director, Neonatal Neurology Program and co-author; and An N. Massaro, M.D., co-director of the Neonatal Neurocritical Care Program and senior author; all of Children’s National; and co-author Allen Everett, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
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“We know that having a child hospitalized in the NICU can be a high-stress time for families,” says Ololade Okito, M.D., lead author of the cross-sectional study. “The good news is that as parental resiliency scores rise, we see a correlation with fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Parents of older, healthier newborns who had less social support were less resilient during their child’s hospitalization in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), a finding that correlates with more symptoms of depression and anxiety, according to Children’s research presented during the Pediatric Academic Societies 2019 Annual Meeting.
Resiliency is the natural born, yet adaptable ability of people to bounce back in the face of significant adversity. Published research indicates that higher resilience is associated with reduced psychological distress, but the phenomenon had not been studied extensively in parents of children hospitalized in a NICU.
“We know that having a child hospitalized in the NICU can be a high-stress time for families,” says Ololade Okito, M.D., lead author of the cross-sectional study. “The good news is that as parental resiliency scores rise, we see a correlation with fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety. Parents who feel they have good family support also have higher resilience scores.”
The project is an offshoot of a larger study examining the impact of peer mentoring by other NICU parents who have experienced the same emotional rollercoaster ride as their tiny infants sometimes thrived and other times struggled.
The research team enrolled 35 parents whose newborns were 34 weeks gestation and younger and administered a battery of validated surveys, including:
Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support
Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and
Parent Stress Scale – NICU
Forty percent of these parents had high resilience scores; parents whose infants were a mean of 27.3 gestational weeks and who had more severe health challenges reported higher resilience. Another 40% of these parents had elevated depressive symptoms, while 31% screened positive for anxiety. Parental distress impairs the quality of parent-child interactions and long-term child development, the research team writes.
“Higher NICU-related stress correlates with greater symptoms of depression and anxiety in parents,” says Lamia Soghier, M.D., MEd, medical director of Children’s neonatal intensive care unit and the study’s senior author. “Specifically targeting interventions to these parents may help to improve their resilience, decrease the stress of parenting a child in the NICU and give these kids a healthier start to life.”
https://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Ololade-Okito-horizontal.png300400Innovation Districthttps://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/innovationdistrict_logo-1-1030x165.pngInnovation District2019-04-29 08:00:012022-11-21 10:13:48Parents of older, healthier newborns with less social support less resilient
“By advancing our understanding of the genetic causes and the anatomic differences among patients, the real goal of this research is to generate knowledge that will allow us to take better care of children with hypospadias,” Daniel Casella, M.D. says.
Daniel Casella, M.D., a urologist at Children’s National, was honored with an AUA Mid-Atlantic Section William D. Steers, M.D. Award, which provides two years of dedicated research funding that he will use to better understand the genetic causes for hypospadias.
With over 7,000 new cases a year in the U.S., hypospadias is a common birth defect that occurs when the urethra, the tube that transports urine out of the body, does not form completely in males.
Dr. Casella has identified a unique subset of cells in the developing urethra that have stopped dividing but remain metabolically active and are thought to represent a novel signaling center. He likens them to doing the work of a construction foreman. “If you’re constructing a building, you need to make sure that everyone follows the blueprints. We believe that these developmentally senescent cells are sending important signals that define how the urethra is formed,” he says.
His project also will help to standardize the characterization of hypospadias. Hypospadias is classically associated with a downward bend to the penis, a urethra that does not extend to the head of the penis and incomplete formation of the foreskin. Still, there is significant variability among patients’ anatomy and to date, no standardized method for documenting hypospadias anatomy.
“Some surgeons take measurements in the operating room, but without a standardized classification system, there is no definitive way to compare measurements among providers or standardize diagnoses from measurements that every surgeon makes,” he adds. “What one surgeon may call ‘distal’ may be called ‘midshaft’ by another.” (With distal hypospadias, the urethra opening is near the penis head; with midshaft hypospadias, the urethra opening occurs along the penis shaft.)
“By advancing our understanding of the genetic causes and the anatomic differences among patients, the real goal of this research is to generate knowledge that will allow us to take better care of children with hypospadias,” he says.
Parents worry about lingering social stigma, since some boys with hypospadias are unable to urinate while standing, and in older children the condition can be associated with difficulties having sex. Surgical correction of hypospadias traditionally is performed when children are between 6 months to 1 year old.
When reviewing treatment options with family, “discussing the surgery and postoperative care is straight forward. The hard part of our discussion is not having good answers to questions about long-term outcomes,” he says.
Dr. Casella’s study hopes to build the framework to enable that basic research to be done.
“Say we wanted to do a study to see how patients are doing 15-20 years after their surgery. If we go to their charts now, often we can’t accurately describe their anatomy prior to surgery. By establishing uniform measurement baselines, we can accurately track long-term outcomes since we’ll know what condition that child started with and where they ended up,” he says.
Dr. Casella’s research project will be conducted at Children’s National under the mentorship of Eric Vilain, M.D., Ph.D., an international expert in sex and genitalia development; Dolores J. Lamb, Ph.D., HCLD, an established leader in urology based at Weill Cornell Medicine; and Marius George Linguraru, DPhil, MA, MSc, an expert in image processing and artificial intelligence.
https://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DNA-Molecule.png300400Innovation Districthttps://innovationdistrict.childrensnational.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/innovationdistrict_logo-1-1030x165.pngInnovation District2019-04-23 12:45:022024-06-05 11:24:53Decoding cellular signals linked to hypospadias
