Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a rare but serious condition of children and often progresses to heart failure. The outcomes for children with DCM are poor, with 50% of pediatric patients dying or needing a heart transplant within 5 years of diagnosis. 

In this episode, Geoff Marsh meets professor Carmen Sucharov from the University of Colorado Anschutz campus and the director of the Pediatric Cardiology Research Laboratories. She and her team have been studying the regulation of micro-RNAs and their putative target genes in the pediatric DCM heart that may contribute to the distinctive phenotype of this disease in children.

Read the article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-021-01548-w

April: miRNA expression in the pediatric dilated cardiomyopathy heart

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: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-022-02176-8

The social epidemiology of adolescent problematic screen use.

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 article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-022-02055-2

Neutrophil function in pediatric lupus.

It’s clear there are diversity issues in science, both in terms of who does or doesn’t receive research grants, as well as who is or isn’t represented at the highest levels of scientific research. When Caleb Weinreb and Daphne Sun began their PhD program at Harvard University Medical School in systems biology, they took this on as an issue. They learned from others in their department, and they eventually created a course on the topic for incoming first year PhD students.

As they worked on improving their course over the years, they saw that in science there was a focus on narrowing racial gaps by correcting for implicit bias. For example, there had been a well-known study in which resumes with stereotypically African-American names weren’t considered as seriously as those with stereotypically white names. But the two PhD students realized that efforts to overcome such implicit bias weren’t moving the needle. They recently published a perspective paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology called “To dismantle structural racism in science, scientists need to learn how it works.” Caleb Weinreb is now a post-doc in the neuroscience department at Harvard Medical School.

Read the full paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-023-01534-2

To dismantle structural racism in science, scientists need to learn how it works

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

February: Pharamcogenetic profiling in children with medical complexity

Antisocial personality disorder, or ASPD, is a difficult disorder to study. There have been studies on psychopathic individuals, and on youth with psychopathic traits, but most studies on ASPD to date have been on incarcerated adults. A team of researchers at Heidelberg University wanted to study individuals who are not incarcerated and see what these findings could elucidate about the brains, in particular the amygdalas, of individuals with ASPD.

Haang Jeung-Maarse is a medical doctor at Bielfeld University in Germany and is one of the authors of the paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, on the effects of oxytocin on amygdala reactivity to angry faces in males and females with antisocial personality disorder.

Read the full study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-023-01549-9

Oxytocin effects on amygdala reactivity to angry faces in males and females with ASPD

Sanjay Mathew is a professor and vice chair for research at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program. He’s one of the two authors of a recent review paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, “The why, when, where, how, and so what of so-called rapidly acting antidepressants.”

With his colleague Alan Schatzberg, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Mood Disorders Center at Stanford University, they explore both the drugs that have been studied as rapidly-acting anti-depressants to date, and they also review the challenges and opportunities in how such research is conducted. They say that a version of ketamine has changed the field.

Read the full study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-023-01647-8

The why, when, where, how, and so what of so-called rapidly acting antidepressants

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: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-023-02567-5

Novel metrics to characterise the temporal lobe of very preterm infants.

Barriers to gene-flow control population connectivity, but what barriers exist in the sea? How similar is the connectivity of island marine organisms to those on land? As with many evolutionary questions, the Galapagos is the perfect place to find answers. Max Hirschfeld and Christine Dudgeon discuss their new work with the Galapagos bullhead shark.

Galpagos island history shapes populations

The drug naloxone, otherwise known as Narcan, is a critical tool in reversing fentanyl overdoses and reducing mortality. But now fentanyl is appearing on the streets adulterated with a drug called xylazine. 

Justin Strickland, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Cassandra Gipson-Reichardt, associate professor in the department of pharmacology nutritional sciences at the University of Kentucky, are the coauthors of a new paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology about the importance of integrating public health and translational science to address the challenges of xylazine adulteration of fentanyl. 

Read the full study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-023-01680-7

Integrating public health and translational basic science to address adulteration of fentanyl

We tend to focus on research studies on the podcast, but review papers are a hugely important part of the scientific literature. This week we talk to Frank Hailer, reviews editor, who demonstrates his passion for using genetics in his work and talks about why he loves his job at Heredity.

Frank Hailer - research, reviews and his role at Heredity

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: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-023-02656-5

Do Bayley trajectories predict school-readiness better than single assessments in preterm infants?

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: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-023-02737-5

Placental pathology and neurodevelopmental outcomes in patients with neonatal encephalopathy

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

Conversation with Dr. Maximo Vento

One of the big decisions in planning a genetic study is what kind of sequencing approach to use. This episode we talk to Daria Martchenko and Aaron Shafer (Trent University, Canada), whose paper compares and contrasts whole genomes to RADseq in a study of mountain goat demography and adaptive history.

Genomes or Radseq, mountain goats don't mind.

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: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-023-02619-w

Predicting functional and quality-of-life outcomes following pediatric sepsis.

Each year Heredity awards a prize for the best student paper in the journal, this episode Ellen Nikelski, talking about her paper and how it feels to have been the winner in 2023.

Ellen Nikelski

Student prize 2023 with Ellen Nikelski

Serotonin is a critical chemical when it comes to a number of psychiatric conditions, such as OCD, where it seems to play a particular role in cognitive flexibility. That is, serotonin levels are related to the fact that someone is perseverating on intrusive thoughts or compulsions and isn’t able to be as flexible as otherwise would be necessary.

Trevor Robbins, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, is one of the authors of a recent study titled Comparable roles for serotonin in rats and humans for computations underlying flexible decision-making, and he says such cognitive flexibility also plays a role in depression and schizophrenia. 

Read the full study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-023-01762-6

Comparable roles for serotonin in rats and humans for computations underlying decision-making

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 (https://www.nature.com/collections/chjjihfaec).

Read Dr. Nadeau's editorial here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-022-02290-7

Global climate change: the defining issue of our time for our children’s health

PopGroup is the beloved annual meeting of the Population Genetics group of the Genetics Society. This episode we hear from Mike Richie, lead organiser at this year's host organisation - the University of St Andrews, from plenary speaker Susan Johnston and from student prizewinner Diana Lobo.

PopGroup 57 special - part 1

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.

Conversation with Linda de Vries

In this second of our special episodes on the 2024 PopGroup conference, we hear from Mark Kirkpatrick, who gave the plenary talk which was the climactic end to the meeting. Mark tells us why he loves Popgroup, what his conference talk was about and what questions he's excited to dig into next.

PopGroup 57 special - part 2

Dr. Nicole Petersen is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UCLA. Her commentary is a new paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology called “Spotlighting SHAPERS: sex hormones associated with psychological and endocrine roles.” Dr. Petersen starts the paper describing an unnamed signaling molecule that can affect the physical structure of the brain and that seems to be related to a wide number of psychological and neurological conditions. Then she reveals that this is estradiol. The point she makes in the paper is that estrogen isn’t the only neuroactive substance that affects the brain in ways that we just don’t understand.

Read the full study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-024-01819-0

Spotlighting SHAPERS: sex hormones associated with psychological and endocrine roles

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

Conversation With Pediatric Researchers Cynthia Bearer and Eleanor Molloy

We're in the age of big data, but there remain several hurdles to integrating genomics into conservation science. We hear about these issues from Prof Cock Van Oosterhout, and discuss the potential solutions he outlined in his recent perspectives article for Heredity.

Harnessing genomics and AI for conservation

Genes are recipes for proteins and proteins do stuff. But if a gene can make more than one protein, how does that affect genetic variation and the possible routes to adaptation? We get an introduction to the topic of adaptive alternative splicing from David Manahan.

Alternative splicing and thermal adaptation in mice

In this episode of Pediapod, Section Editor Jeanie Tryggestad discusses the most recent advances in the field of Pediatric Endocrinology.

What's hot in Endocrinology?

There’s a hormone called ghrelin that’s secreted in the stomach, and when someone is hungry it contributes to that feeling of hunger and the need to search for food. But neurological studies have suggested that ghrelin might also play a role in compulsivity and impulsivity, and it might be related to substance use disorders.

Rebecca Boeme is an assistant professor at Linkoping University in Sweden. She and her colleagues decided to use human subjects to investigate how ghrelin affects reinforcement learning, basically how ghrelin influences decision making when subjects receive positive and negative feedback —and also how it might actually be affecting the brain. 

Read the full study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-024-01821-6

Ghrelin decreases sensitivity to negative feedback and increases prediction-error activity

This month GenePod explores clinical approaches to dealing with the difficult but inevitable problem of how to handle secondary (incidental) findings in genomic analysis.
www.nature.com/gim/index.html

GenePod: Oct 2015 - Expecting the Unexpected: Dealing with secondary findings in genomic sequencing

This week, solving ethical dilemmas Star Trek style, farming festivals boost yield, and three scientists on their sci-fi inspirations.

Nature Podcast

Nature Podcast: 8 Sep 2016 – Sci-Fi special, Star Trek ethics, Gattaca and farming festivals

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