PediaPod: PR's Podcast

Tune in here for the below episodes: iTunes, Google Podcast, Overcast,  RSS Feed, and SoundCloud.

December: Associations of media use and early childhood development: cross-sectional findings from the LIFE Child study.

There is a growing body of evidence showing that excessive early media use is detrimental to children's physical and mental health. As such, the World Health Organization guidelines suggest that screen time for infants should be limited to a maximum of one hour per day. However, with the growing ubiquity of digital media, it is thought that preschoolers are exposed to more than two hours of screen time. With the rapidly changing nature of digital media use, it is not yet clear how this is affecting different aspects of early childhood development. The evidence to date has been increasingly mixed.

In this episode, we speak to medical student Clarissa Schwarzer who is doing her doctoral thesis on early childhood development and media use by children and mothers at the Leipzig Research Center for Civilization Diseases. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)

November: Early Career Investigator Spotlight: Matthew W. Harer.

Caffeine administration has been associated with reduced rates of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) in preterm neonates but the effect of caffeine on renal oxygenation is unknown. 

In this episode, we meet this month's highlighted Early Career Investigator, Dr. Matthew Harer from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He has been investigating the potential use of Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS), a non-invasive means of continuously measuring tissue oxygenation to assess the effects of caffeine on renal oxygenation, in the hope that caffeine might one day be used to prevent and even treat AKI. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)

October: SARS-CoV-2 vaccine testing and trials in the pediatric population: biologic, ethical, research, and implementation challenges.

Early on in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the majority of infected children were either asymptomatic or had mild COVID-19 disease, prompting many to demand a higher acceptable risk threshold for pediatric vaccines. More recently, as children begin to make up a larger proportion of the infected population and following evidence of the mental and physical toll exacted by the pandemic on children, a pediatric vaccine is now more pressing. But challenges to widespread vaccine uptake remain. In this episode meet Dr. Chulie Ulloa from the University of California Irvine about a recent commentary she wrote with fellow pediatric providers, physician scientists and advocates for children about these challenges and how they might be overcome. Have a listen! Related Articles: 1 and 2. (Transcript)

September: Juvenile idiopathic arthritis: lymphocyte activation gene-3 is a central immune receptor in children with oligoarticular subtypes.

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is one of the most common inflammatory joint diseases in children. Previous studies have shown that in the oligoarticular subtype of this disease, T cells play a central role in pathogenesis. T cell inhibitory receptors (IRs) seem to play an important role in the development of tolerance and recognition of self and non-self antigens. Ligands binding to these IRs inhibit T cell function and modulate the course of the immune response. In this episode, we meet this month's highlighted Early Career Investigator Erdal Sag, a paediatric rheumatologist at Ankara Training and Research Hospital in Turkey. He and his team designed an ex vivo disease model to examine the effects of different co-inhibitory receptors on the pathogenesis of oligoarticular JIA. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)

August: Chorioamnionitis induces changes in ovine pulmonary endogenous epithelial stem/progenitor cells in utero.

Chorioamnionitis is an intrauterine infection of the placenta and fetal membranes. It is the leading cause of preterm delivery and is a common risk factor for adverse pulmonary outcomes such as bronchopulmonary dysplasia. There is evidence to suggest that the first negative impacts on pulmonary development occur in utero in the presence of chorioamnionitis. In this episode, we meet assistant professors Niki Reynaert and Tim Wolfs from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Together they studied an ovine model of chorioamnionitis in order to study the effects of chronic and acute inflammation on the developing lungs. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)

July: Marc Beltempo – Early Career Investigator Highlight​​​.

Previous studies have shown an association between fluid retention during the early postnatal period and increased BPD. However, these studies were performed nearly two decades ago meaning their results may not apply to the contemporary NICU setting, with its widespread use of surfactants and modern incubators. In this episode we meet this month's featured Early Career Investigator Marc Beltempo from McGill University and the Montreal Children's Hospital in Canada, who has revisited this important question. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)

June: Calcium-sensing receptor and CPAP-induced neonatal airway hyper reactivity in mice​​.

Respiratory support plays a crucial role in the care of preterm infants in the NICU, ensuring that they get enough oxygen during this critical period of development. But it is becoming increasingly clear that former preterm infants who have been exposed to ventilatory support are at an increased risk of developing asthma and other respiratory disorders. In this episode, we speak to Peter Macfarlane, an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Rainbow Babies and Children's hospital. He and his team have developed a mouse model to study the effects of CPAP in combination with supplemental oxygen on lung function. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)

May: The utility of the fronto-temporal horn ratio on cranial ultrasound in premature newborns: a ventriculomegaly marker​.

Extremely preterm infants are at a high risk for brain injury, and this risk is most severe in children with intraventricular hemorrhage followed by post-hemorrhagic ventricular dilation. Bedside cranial ultrasound allows clinicians to identify the progressive dilation of the lateral ventricles, however, there is currently no consensus on how to quantitatively estimate this dilation and at what point to intervene. In this episode, we meet this month's highlighted Early Career Investigator, Dr. Rawad Obeid, a pediatric neurologist at the Oakland University School of Medicine. He and his team investigated a new parameter for estimating lateral ventricular dilation called the frontal-temporal horn ratio, in an effort to define normative values and to correlate this parameter with white matter injury at term-age equivalent. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)

March: Impact of integrated clinical decision support systems in the management of pediatric acute kidney injury: a pilot study.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) causes significant morbidity and mortality in children, including prolonged hospital stays, increased risk of in-hospital death and future risk of hypertension and progression to chronic kidney disease. Whilst it is quite common, it often goes unrecognised, especially outside of the critical care setting. In this episode, Geoff Marsh speaks to Dr. Shina Menon, a pediatric nephrologist at Seattle Children's Hospital, who performed a pilot study which evaluated the utility of an e-alert system to alert care providers that a patient had AKI, in conjunction with a care bundle which offered simple guidelines to help with their management. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)

February: Autonomic development in preterm infants is associated with morbidity of prematurity.

The latter half of gestation and early neonatal life are critical periods for the maturation of the autonomic nervous system. Premature infants are born with underdeveloped autonomic maturation and must undergo their developmental changes in a vastly different setting to the natural, in utero environment. A number of studies have shown autonomic dysmaturation in premature infants, although these have mainly looked at cohorts of children from high-morbidity NICUs. In this episode, Geoff Marsh talks to Dr. Sarah Mulkey, a fetal neonatal neurologist at Children's National Hospital in Washington DC, who tracked the sympathetic and parasympathetic maturation of a cohort of preterm infants with low medical morbidity in a large community NICU, to assess how birth gestational age affected their autonomic maturation. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)

January: Early pediatric chronic kidney disease is associated with brain volumetric gray matter abnormalities.

Pediatric chronic kidney disease (pCKD) results in a life-long burden that requires routine care. Neurocognitive dysfunction, specifically impairment on tasks of executive function, is a well-established comorbidity but there is a paucity of data exploring the neurobiology of these cognitive deficits. In this episode, we meet early career investigator, Dr Lyndsay Harshman, a pediatric nephrologist at the University of Iowa's Stead Family Children's hospital, who compared the brain morphometry between early stage pCKD children and their typically developing peers, and linked this brain morphometry with disease status and performance on neurocognitive assessments. Have a listen! Related Article. (Transcript)