Pediatric Research Podcast

This episode, along with a few more to come, involves a conversation with a senior investigator who has had a large and lasting effect in the world of pediatric research. The Early Career Investigator episodes will still be coming once a month, but hopefully this will add a bit of variety to the Pediapod feed and shine a light on some of the pioneers who have helped shape the face of modern Pediatrics. This episode features Dr. Max Vento.

Read Max Vento's biocommentary here: www.nature.com/documents/Max_Vento_Biocommentary.pdf

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Hypoxic Ischaemic Encephalopathy (HIE), a subset of neonatal encephalopathy, is the most common neurological condition in term born infants. It is known that a range of acute and chronic placental pathologies are more common in infants with HIE. However little is known about how differences in utero-placental function might contribute to varied outcomes in these infants.

In this episode of Pediapod, we speak to Early Career Investigator Dr. Jeffrey Russ from Duke University Medical Center, who retrospectively analyzed whether acute versus chronic placental pathology were differentially associated with outcomes in patients with presumed HIE.

Read the full study here: The association of placental pathology and neurodevelopmental outcomes in patients with neonatal encephalopathy | Pediatric Research (nature.com)

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The development of children born very preterm is most often evaluated using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. These single assessments are routinely used as outcome measures for neonatal interventions or as a means of prognosis. However, early Bayley scores may not accurately predict later outcomes. 

In this episode of Pediapod, we speak to Dr. Mary Lauren Neel from Emory University who, along with her team, set up a study to determine whether Bayley-III score trajectories measured at multiple timepoints in children born very preterm, predicted school readiness at age 5, better than a single assessment. 

Read the full study here: Bayley trajectories predict school readiness better than single assessments in formerly very preterm preschoolers | Pediatric Research (nature.com)

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The temporal facilitates many complex neurological processes. Alterations to these processes are known to correlate with specific functional deficits commonly found in preterm-born children at and beyond school age. However, as yet there is not an objective, validated method to assess the temporal lobe structure or size in very preterm infants.

In this episode of Pediapod, I speak to neonatologist and this month's highlighted Early Career Investigator, Katherine Bell, from the Brigham and Women's hospital, Boston who developed a new method for quantifying temporal lobe size in very preterm infants at term equivalent age using simple metrics performed on brain MRI. 

Read the full study here: Novel metrics to characterize temporal lobe of very preterm infants on term-equivalent brain MRI | Pediatric Research (nature.com)

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The COVID-19 pandemic severely affected health and healthcare systems worldwide and could have resulted in changes in fetal and neonatal outcomes.

In this episode, we speak to Early Career Investigator, Vivek Shukla from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Using machine learning techniques, he performed a population-based study to identify changes in fetal and neonatal outcomes during the initial and delta COVID-19 pandemic period as compared to the baseline period.

Listen to the full study here: Trends in fetal and neonatal outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic in Alabama | Pediatric Research (nature.com)

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Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of telemedicine was limited in pediatric primary care. Then, in 2020 it increased exponentially. However, early COVID-19 reports described inequities in telemedicine use across multiple specialties.

In this episode, we meet Early Career Investigator, Kelsey Schweiberger from the University of Pittsburgh. In a recent paper, she describes the factors associated with scheduling and attendance of telemedicine appointments for pediatric primary care throughout the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to identify priorities for enhanced equity in access. 

Read the full paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-023-02481-w

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Heart rate characteristics and demographic factors have long been used to aid early detection of late-onset sepsis, however respiratory data may contain additional signatures of infection. 

In this episode we meet Early Career Investigator Brynne Sullivan from the University of Virginia. She and her team developed machine learning models to predict late-onset sepsis that were trained on heart rate and respiratory data to provide a cardiorespiratory early warning system which outperformed models using heart rate or demographics alone.

Read the full article here: Cardiorespiratory signature of neonatal sepsis: development and validation of prediction models in 3 NICUs | Pediatric Research

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Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is the most common morbidity among very preterm infants. 

Commonly, nutritional interventions are focused on achieving optimal body weight gain. However, very preterm infants with evolving lung disease often experience disproportionate growth in the neonatal period, which may contribute to the odds of developing BPD.

In this episode of Pediapod, we speak to Early Career Investigator Marc Beltempo from McGill University, Montréal, Canada who has investigated the link between change in body mass index and evolving BPD in very preterm infants.

Read the full study here: The association between BMI trajectories and bronchopulmonary dysplasia among very preterm infants | Pediatric Research (nature.com)

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Kawasaki disease is a common childhood vasculitis and its global incidence appears to be increasing. Although this disease is self-limiting, the associated vasculopathy can cause cardiovascular complications.

In this episode of Pediapod, we meet Early Career Investigator Cal Robinson at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada who performed a population-based cohort study using Ontario health administrative databases to determine the risk of cardiovascular events and mortality after Kawasaki disease.

Read the full study here: Cardiovascular outcomes in children with Kawasaki disease: a population-based cohort study | Pediatric Research (nature.com)

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Children with medical complexity typically require multiple medications throughout the course of their treatment. These individuals also increasingly undergo genome-wide testing early in life as a diagnostic test. 

Since many medications prescribed to children have established gene-drug interactions, could this genetic data be repurposed to aid precision prescribing in this priority pediatric population?

In today's Pediapod, we meet Early Career Investigator, Gregory Costain, a physician scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada who recently published a retrospective study which looked at this question.

Read the full study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-022-02313-3

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