Editor's Focus

Volume 84 No. 5 November 2018

Early Career Investigator

Congratulations to Praveen Chandrasekharan, the Early Career Investigator for November. He was born in Chennai, India, where his parents inspired him to pursue medicine. He met his wife during his pediatric residency and they worked together as he completed his neonatology fellowship at University of Buffalo. His inspiration for his work was the birth of his son, who was born early—so they are truly a family of NICU graduates! His current research is focused on the changing hemodynamics of the pulmonary and systemic circulations at birth. In an article in this issue, he and colleagues report that initial resuscitation of preterm lambs with 21% oxygen titrated up to achieve goal oxygen saturation led to higher pulmonary vascular resistance compared with term lambs resuscitated with 21% oxygen. See pages XXX and XXX

Redefining bronchopulmonary dysplasia

In this commentary, Ibrahim and Bhandari review the evolution of bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Both current and proposed new definitions of the disorder are discussed. Recognition of the disease’s variability is critical for research progress and better interventions.See pages XXX

Childhood cardiovascular risk indicators and later subfertility

Wang et al. followed 1799 women enrolled in the Bogalusa Heart Study. They found that some cardiovascular risk factors measured in childhood and adolescence are associated with adult subfertility. See page XXX

The challenges of telemedicine

This intriguing article by Haimi et al. describes the use of qualitative methodology to explore the experiences, attitudes, and challenges of telemedicine in Haifa, Israel. They found that physicians need special expertise, qualities, and skills to face the difficulties and challenges of telemedicine. See page XXX

Sarcomere gene variants and LVNC

Takasaki et al. screened 82 patients with left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC) for mutations in genes encoding sarcomere gene variants, with a detection rate of 27%. In pluripotent stem cells from a patient with a pathological mutation in tropomyosin I, tropomyosin I was mislocalized, sarcomere structure was disrupted, and calcium handling was impaired. Microarray analysis showed that numerous genes involved in heart development were downregulated. See page XXX

Hydrogen peroxide in milk enhances gastric motility

Fajardo et al. used a rat model to investigate the effects of hydrogen peroxide on gastric muscle contraction. They found that hydrogen peroxide in concentrations similar to those in human milk promoted gastric motility in both newborn and adult gastric fundi, and that the effect was modulated by ROCK-2 activation. See page XXX

Family reflections on ROP

In one of Pediatric Research’s new article categories, Family Reflections, a mother tells the story of her son’s experience with retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and thanks researchers for their work. However, she also points out the lack of lay public literature available to parents and suggests that “parent abstracts” of research articles would be a very welcome addition to the research literature. See page XXX