Pediatric Research Podcast

In this episode of Pediapod, Section Editor Jeanie Tryggestad discusses the most recent advances in the field of Pediatric Endocrinology. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pediatric researchers Cynthia Bearer and Eleanor Molloy join podcast host Geoff Marsh to give an update on plans for the podcast and to offer some sage advice for Early Career Investigators.Find more Pediapod episodes here: https://www.nature.com/collections/fcbjjbchaa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode involves a conversation with senior investigator Linda de Vries, who has had a large and lasting effect in the world of pediatric research. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The United Nations recently stated that “climate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a defining moment” (https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/climate-change). This statement ended the political debate about the role of human activities in climate change. Global climate change is happening and it will have a profound effect on our children.Listen and learn from Dr. Kari Nadeau the Chair of Environmental Health from Harvard School of Public Health and one of the guest editors of Pediatric Research's special issue on climate change. Read Dr. Nadeau's editorial here: Global climate change: the defining issue of our time for our children’s health | Pediatric Research (nature.com) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Illness severity scores are commonly used for mortality prediction and risk stratification in pediatric critical care research. However, as mortality has steadily declined in the pediatric intensive care unit there has been increasing attention given to evaluating non-mortality outcomes in survivors. In this episode we meet Early Career Investigator Elizabeth Killien from Seattle Children's Hospital. In order to evaluate the ability of two commonly used illness severity scores to predict morbidity outcomes, she performed a secondary analysis of the Life After Pediatric Sepsis Evaluation (LAPSE) multicenter longitudinal cohort study of functional and health-related quality of life outcomes among survivors of septic shock.Read the full article here: Predicting functional and quality-of-life outcomes following pediatric sepsis: performance of PRISM-III and PELOD-2 | Pediatric Research (nature.com) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS) represents a major public health problem in the US with a high socioeconomic burden. The pathophysiology of this condition is not yet fully understood. Data from animal models have shown that opioids modulate brain reward signalling via an inflammatory cascade, however no such data exist for opioid-exposed neonates.In this episode of Pediapod we meet Early Career Investigator Elizabeth Yen, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine. She recently published a pilot study which looked at the effects of prenatal opioid exposure on gene expression and white matter injury. Read the full study here: Sex-specific inflammatory and white matter effects of prenatal opioid exposure: a pilot study | Pediatric Research (nature.com) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rare diseases affect millions of people in the USA. However, access to subspecialty care is not distributed equitably and there may be other barriers to clinic attendance. Furthermore, once established within the genetics clinic, families may still face barriers along the path to getting a molecular diagnosis.In this episode, we meet Early Career Investigator, Monica Wojcik, a neonatologist and geneticist at Boston Children's Hospital who ran a study to determine the influence of social determinants of health on the care-cascade following referral to a high-volume pediatric outpatient genetics clinic. Read the full study here: Rare diseases, common barriers: disparities in pediatric clinical genetics outcomes | Pediatric Research (nature.com) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) causes significant long-term morbidity and mortality, particularly in children. There is some evidence that the innate immune system, in particular neutrophil activity, can be compromised in adult-onset lupus. Yet there is a paucity of data on neutrophil activity in pediatric SLE. This month on Pediapod, we join Early Career Investigator, Rakesh Kumar Pilania, an assistant professor at the postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India to discuss his study of neutrophil activity in patients with pediatric SLE and what it reveals about the etiology of this condition.Read the full study here. Pediatric systemic lupus erythematosus: phagocytic defect and oxidase activity of neutrophils | Pediatric Research (nature.com) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

95% of adolescents in the US have access to a smartphone and 45% report being online "almost constantly". Beyond the general time spent on screens, the control over usage and the interference into other activities are also important considerations and could reflect problematic screen use. This week on Pediapod, we meet Early Career Investigator, Professor Jason Nagata from the University of California, San Francisco to discuss his recent study of the sociodemographic correlates of problematic screen use. Read the full article here: Social epidemiology of early adolescent problematic screen use in the United States | Pediatric Research (nature.com) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Baby Doe Regulations, which regulate the provision of life-sustaining treatment to seriously ill neonates, caused a stir amongst neonatologists when they were first enacted in the 1980s. The fear at the time was that they would restrict their ability to provide optimal care to seriously ill patients by mandating the use of aggressive treatments in all but futile cases, irrespective of a patient's quality of life.In this episode, we meet Early Career Investigator Katherine Guttman from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt Sinai, New York. She tells us about her study which aimed to assess contemporary neonatologists' perceptions of the Baby Doe Regulations and to compare them to the views of neonatologists when they were first enacted.Read the full study here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.