|
In Pursuit Podcast
A Father-Focused Lens on Family Health
News from the Manne Research Institute Pillars
- 2022 Viral Season Impacts on Children’s Hospital Resource Utilization
- Regenerating Damaged Heart Cells
- Fathers and Families: Innovations in Digital Support, Disability and Engagement
- Children With Skin Diseases Suffer Bullying, Stigma and Depression
- Gene Therapies Could Transform Treatment of Rare Blood Disorders
Manne Research Institute in the Media
| | |
A Father-Focused Lens on Family Health with Dr. Craig Garfield | |
As Father's Day approaches, In Pursuit welcomes Craig Garfield, MD, MAPP, and explores how family dynamics can influence child health outcomes, specifically the impact that fathers can have on their children's health and development and the importance of including fathers in public health data collection. Dr. Garfield leads the Family & Child Health Innovations Program (FCHIP), which is housed in Manne Research Institute at Lurie Children’s and is part of the Mary Ann & J. Milburn Smith Child Health Outcomes, Research and Evaluation Center. | | |
|
NEWS FROM THE RESEARCH PILLARS | |
2022 Viral Season Impacts on Children’s Hospital Resource Utilization | |
|
The concurrent rise of multiple viral epidemics (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus) during the 2022–2023 viral respiratory season resulted in a sudden increase in demand for pediatric inpatient beds, creating a strain on the pediatric acute care system. The severity of that season was widely reported, but the extent of the increase in hospital volume compared to prior viral seasons was less known. Having a better understanding of this may provide insights about current system capacity and aid future surge planning efforts. To quantify the extent of the viral epidemic, researchers from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and several other children’s hospitals collaborated to compare the epidemiology, resource utilization, and outcomes of the 2022–2023 viral respiratory season with prior seasons in children’s hospitals. Their study is published in the journal Pediatrics.
| |
|
Scientists from Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago have discovered a way to regenerate damaged heart muscle cells in mice, a development which may provide a new avenue for treating congenital heart defects in children and heart attack damage in adults, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Hypoplastic left heart syndrome, or HLHS, is a rare congenital heart defect that occurs when the left side of a baby’s heart doesn’t develop properly during pregnancy. The condition affects one in 5,000 newborns and is responsible for 23 percent of cardiac deaths in the first week of life.
Cardiomyocytes, the cells responsible for contracting the heart muscle, can regenerate in newborn mammals, but lose this ability with age, said senior author Paul Schumacker, PhD, Patrick M. Magoon Distinguished Professor in Neonatal Research at Lurie Children’s and Professor of Pediatrics, Cell and Molecular Biology, and Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
“At the time of birth, the cardiac muscle cells still can undergo mitotic cell division,” Dr. Schumacker said. “For example, if the heart of a newborn mouse is damaged when it’s a day or two old, and then you wait until the mouse is an adult, if you look at the area of the heart that was damaged previously, you’d never know that there was damage there.”
| |
|
Fathers and Families: Innovations in Digital Support, Disability and Engagement
FCHIP's 2024 Father's Day Report
| |
The Family & Child Health Innovations Program (FCHIP) has published its fourth annual Father’s Day Report. Bridging from FCHIP's Mother’s Day highlights, the report presents Father’s Day-relevant information on innovative father-focused technology programs, fathers with disabilities, and how states are bringing fathers into maternal and child health spaces. FCHIP continues to highlight images from the Lurie Family Photobook, an ongoing project compiling images of Lurie Children’s families in the hospital and in the community. |
|
|
|
When someone walks briskly past David Artz, 16, on the sidewalk, he immediately thinks they are trying to get away from him. This is how his young mind works. He has a chronic skin disease that makes his skin red, scaly and rough. He has alopecia and is bald.
David has grown up feeling stigmatized and teased–someone to be avoided because he might be “contagious.”
“It makes me sad and tearful when I think people are avoiding me because of how I look,” Artz said. “It’s hard to be different.”
A new Northwestern Medicine study published in JAMA Dermatology shows Artz’s experience is common for children and teens with chronic skin diseases.
The majority of children and teens with chronic skin diseases such as acne, eczema, psoriasis, alopecia areata (hair loss) and vitiligo (pigment loss) feel stigmatized by peers for their condition and are sometimes bullied, the study reports. As a result, these children have a poor quality of life that includes suffering from depression, anxiety and impaired relationships with their peers.
“These chronic skin conditions can be tremendously life-altering, including shaping psychosocial development,” said corresponding study author Amy Paller, MD, MS, a pediatric dermatologist at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and the Chair and Walter J. Hamlin Professor of Dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
|
|
|
A new gene therapy could revolutionize treatment for two rare genetic blood disorders, according to a pair of trials published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Beta thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder in which the body doesn’t make as much hemoglobin as it needs, affects approximately 1 in 100,000 people, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders.
By contrast, in sickle cell disease, red blood cells become rigid and sticky, taking on the shape of a “sickle.” Sickle cells die early, leaving a shortage of healthy red blood cells. The condition affects more than 100,000 people in the U.S. and 20 million people worldwide, according to the National Institutes of Health.
In two studies, investigators sought to test the effects of exagamglogene autotemcel (exa-cel), a gene therapy that works by re-engineering stem cells to reactivate fetal hemoglobin production in a patient’s blood, thereby producing healthier blood cells.
“With these therapies, the stem cells are taken from the patients themselves, and then the stem cells are edited or modified in a way that offers clinical benefit for the patient,” said Robert Liem, MD, Division Head of the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, who was a co-author of both studies. “In both of these blood conditions, the gene modification process targets the gene BCL11A and it results in the production of higher levels of fetal hemoglobin, which we normally stop making after birth, but having more fetal hemoglobin reduces complications of thalassemia and sickle cell disease.”
| |
MANNE RESEARCH INSTITUTE IN THE MEDIA | |
|
Don't miss Manne Research Institute news as it happens.
Follow us on X and LinkedIn today.
| |
| | | |
