Congratulations to Prof Kenny who was honoured with a Leadership Award, nominated by staff in University College Cork.

Full details of the University Staff Recognition Awards Programme 2016, including membership of the Awards Selection Committee, are available at http://www.ucc.ie/en/sdc/

If you would like to apply for the TY Programme, download the form below and send it in.

The 2017 International Stillbirth Alliance Conference will take place at University College Cork from Friday 22nd September – Sunday 24th September 2017.

Save the Date!

www.isacork2017.com

A new HRB-funded study, shows that a mild blood or oxygen deficit at birth, which leads to a condition called Hypoxic Ischaematic Encephalopathy (HIE) can result in children having lower IQ than their peers at the age of five and increased rates of overall disability.  The study carried out by clinicians at the INFANT Centre, University College Cork, followed a group of babies born with mild, moderate or severe HIE until they were five years of age.

Each year three in every 1000, or roughly 180, children born in Ireland will develop clinical signs of brain dysfunction, or hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) which require the baby to be admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. HIE varies in severity and is graded as mild, moderate or severe.

Currently all babies with a moderate or severe grade of HIE are offered cooling therapy. The baby is cared for in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, placed on a cooling blanket and their body temperature is maintained at 33.5-34.5 degrees centigrade for 72 hours. Cooling at this crucial time reduces the energy expenditure of the brain, reduces inflammation and gives the brain time to recover improving the chances of a good long-term outcome.

Cooling has repeatedly been shown to be safe and effective for babies with moderate and severe HIE and almost halves their risk of cerebral palsy or moderate-to-severe disability at 5 years. However, to date children with mild grade of HIE (approximately 90 babies each year in Ireland) are not cooled because their outcome has generally been thought to be very good.

According to Dr Deirdre Murray, HRB Clinician Scientist and Lead Investigator on the study,

“We wanted to examine cognitive and motor outcomes among all grades of HIE babies up to the age of five. We monitored the function of the baby’s brain very carefully in the first few days after birth by measuring the tiny electrical signals of the brain (EEG). This helped us to accurately grade the degree of altered brain function.  Our research has shown that at five years, children admitted to the NICU with a mild grade of HIE at birth have IQ scores approximately 10 points lower than their peers. At five years the children had higher rates of difficulties than we would expect in the areas of learning, speech, movement or behaviour, with 35% of the group having problems in one or more areas.

Clearly the outcome for children experiencing mild HIE is not as good as previously thought.  This raises the question of whether infants with mild HIE should also be offered cooling therapy soon after birth. At present we don’t have an answer to this question as no trials to date have examined the effectiveness of cooling in infants mild HIE and whether this would improve their outcome.”

INFANT Director and study co-investigator Professor Geraldine Boylan says, “This study is very important given more than half of all infants with newborn encephalopathy are assigned a mild grade at birth and do not receive cooling therapy. This study has clearly shown that these infants have significant problems by five years, which represents a significant burden of disability in Ireland, and worldwide.”

Speaking about the research Dr Graham Love, Chief Executive at the HRB said, ‘this work highlights the importance of embedding research into everyday clinical care, and then using the evidence it provides to inform clinical practice or future research ’.

Deirdre Murray adds, “We urgently need to examine our management of this group of infants in the crucial first days after their birth and further research is needed to assess the impact of cooling on newborns with mild HIE.”

We will host our annual research day on 9 September 2016 at the Western Gateway Building.

Registration is FREE through Eventbrite: please register HERE

The INFANT Centre will host its annual research day on 9 September 2016 at the Western Gateway Building.

6 CPD Points are Available 

Registration is FREE through Eventbrite: please register HERE

BETTER OUTCOMES FOR MATERNAL, FETAL & INFANT HEALTH

Western Gateway Building, Western Road, Cork. 

PROGRAMME

08.30: Registration

9.00:  Opening Address

Prof Louise Kenny, Director of INFANT

09:15-10:45 – Intrauterine Growth Restriction & Pregnancy Loss

Chair: Dr Keelin O’Donoghue, PI Infant

KEYNOTE: PROF PETER VON DADELSZEN, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.

1. Intrapartum Deaths and Intrapartum Event Related Neonatal Deaths int he Republic of Ireland, 2011-2014

Karen McNamara, Richard Greene and Keelin O’Donoghue 

2. Rates of Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Secondary to IUGR over a 10 Year Period

Ciara Nolan and Etaoin Kent 

3.The General Populations’ Understanding of Miscarriage: A Cross-Sectional Study

Sarah Meaney, Jacqueline Sheehan, Rachel Rice and Keelin O’Donoghue

Coffee Break & Poster Session  

11.15-12.45 – Clinical Trials in Perinatal Populations

Chair: Prof Geraldine Boylan, Director of INFANT

KEYNOTE: DR MARK TURNER, UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL.

1. Risk based monitoring (RBM) tools for clinical trial monitoring – a narrative review

Caroline Hurley, Frances Shiely, Jessica Power, Mike Clarke, Joseph Eustace, Evelyn Flanagan and Patricia Kearney.

2. Habitual Calcium and Vitamin D Intakes in Pregnant Irish Women; Preliminary Data from the DMAT Randomised Controlled Trial

Karen O’ Callaghan, Áine Hennessy, Louise Kenny and Mairead Kiely

3. Validation of altered miRNA in neonatal hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy: The BiHIVE 2 Study

Ann Marie Looney, Marc O’Sullivan, Mikael Finder, Conor Bogue, Caroline Ahearne, Geraldine Boylan, Boubou Hallberg and Deirdre Murray

Lunch & Poster Session

13.30 – 15:00 – Immunology, Dermatology and Atopy

Chair: Dr Deirdre Murray, PI Infant

KEYNOTE: PROF ALAN IRVINE, TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN.

1. A dose-interval study of a dual probiotic preparation in preterm infants.

 C Watkins, K Murphy, Eugene M Dempsey, Carol-Anne O’ Shea, P W O’ Toole, R P Ross, C Stanton and C A Ryan

2. Carbohydrate Syntrophy during feeding on Mother’s Milk enhances the establishment of Bifidobacterium breve in the neonatal gastrointestinal tract.

Mary O’Connell Motherway

3. Postnatal Breastfeeding rates in low risk Nulliparous women in a tertiary hospital

Lisa Mc Sweeney, Cathy Monteith, Colm Breatnach, Patrick Dicker, Adam James, Elizabeth Tully, Maura Lavery, Afif El Khuffash and Etaoin Kent

Coffee Break & Poster Session

15.15 – 16:45 – Innovation in Medical Engineering

Chair: Prof Frederic Adam, PI Infant

KEYNOTE: MATTHEW PICKET, CERNER CORPORATION.

1. Estimating the Gestational Age of Preterm Infants with EEG

John O’ Toole, Elena Pavlidis, Sampsa Vanhatalo, Geraldine Boylan and Nathan Stevenson    

2. Further enhancing obstetric training through the amalgamation of simulation and virtual reality

Donnchadh Coffey, Sabin Tabirca and Richard Greene      

3. Community Connected Health for Pregnancy: The case of LEANBH

Simon Woodworth, Paidi O Reilly, Molly Mattsson, Louise Kenny and Frederic Adam      

17:00:  Prize Giving

Register for your FREE ticket http://tinyurl.com/infant2016registration 

The Directors and Executive Management Team of the INFANT Centre are delighted to announce that Christian Stafford and Josephine Studham will join the INFANT Centre in two new roles: as Head of Business Development and Head of Operations, respectively. Christian and Jo’s addition to the team is an exciting time of growth for INFANT. Prof Louise Kenny noted, “both Christian and Jo bring a wealth of experience and knowledge. Their work will expand the horizons of our centre and enable INFANT to have greater reach and impact”.

As Head of Business Development, Christian will lead and oversee the Centre commercial strategy. He will particularly focus on the development, growth and maintenance of partnerships with industry and the commercialisation of INFANT innovations to the market. He has more than 15 years’ experience in strategic and operational innovation management, research commercialisation, IP management, business development and industrial-academic research collaboration in food and life sciences in UK and Ireland. As Head of Business Development at INFANT, Christian will drive the overall commercial strategy and help promote and develop the role of Infant in delivering societal and economic impact. Christian added that he is “delighted to join INFANT and support the Centre mission of developing and delivering innovations addressing significant unmet need in maternal and infant health. The work of INFANT, the Directors and the all the team is exciting, inspirational and has significant potential to make a profound impact. I very much look forward to helping the Centre on this journey.”

Christian’s staff profile

Jo Studham will take up the role of Head of Operations from September 2016. Jo has worked in clinical research for over 25 years. She joins us from her role as Clinical Research Facility Manager at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. As Head of Operations, she will take responsibility for the day-to-day activities of the Centre and helping to develop the centre’s operational plan. She will have oversight of all project management roles, monitoring and reporting, and will contribute to the future strategic development of the Centre. Jo stated that “In this role, I look forward to supporting the operational delivery of INFANT Centre strategy, whilst increasing the profile of INFANT both nationally and internationally. I was attracted to Infant’s mission because I strongly believe that improving health outcomes for both mothers and babies has a synergistic effect on health outcomes for all. I am really looking forward to working with and becoming a part of the INFANT Centre team.”

Jo’s staff profile

Prof Geraldine Boylan added that “both Christian and Jo possess the skills needed to effectively and efficiently deliver on the significant potential of INFANT. Their work will greatly help to ensure our work benefits women and children worldwide”. We all look forward to working with both Christian and Jo in these new roles, and warmly welcome them to the team.

Our BabyLink project is working to improve outcomes for newborn babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Seizures or fits in newborn babies are classed as a medical emergency and require urgent treatment. However, they are impossible to detect without continuous brain monitoring using EEG. Specialist expertise is required for EEG interpretation and, all too often, no such expert is on-hand in neonatal intensive care units, which can result in important brain events being missed. The INFANT Centre at UCC and Cork University Maternity Hospital has pooled its extensive database of newborn electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings and machine learning expertise with IBM’s Big Data Analytics stream processing capability to create a unique clinical decision support platform.

The directors and Executive Management Team are delighted to announce Dr Keelin O’Donoghue and Prof Jonathan Hourihane will join the INFANT Centre as Principal Investigators.

Dr O’Donoghue and Prof Hourihane’s addition to the PI team is a very exciting time for INFANT. Prof Louise Kenny noted, “both Keelin and Jonathan bring a wealth of experience and knowledge which will extend the research areas of our centre. They are experts in their fields and we are really looking forward to working together to expand the impact that INFANT can have”. Prof Geraldine Boylan added that “the appointment of these PIs will help INFANT gain even more momentum as a world-leading research centre and will further our goal of improving health outcomes for mothers and their children”.

The Vice President for Research and Innovation at UCC, Professor Anita Maguire welcomed the addition of these talented researchers to the innovative INFANT Research Centre, stating: “The complementary expertise these researchers bring to the INFANT team will further support the more rapid translation of important research to the cot-side, and support the development of solutions to unmet global needs in perinatal healthcare.”

Keelin O’Donoghue heads the multi-disciplinary pregnancy loss research group at CUMH. She is an RCOG sub-specialist in maternal and fetal medicine. She established and leads the multiple pregnancy, fetal medicine and pregnancy loss services at CUMH, and is part of the Perinatal Medicine team. Keelin took up a post as Consultant Obstetrician/Gynaecologist and Senior Lecturer at CUMH and University College Cork in 2007and in 2008, Keelin established the first Irish Masters programme in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at UCC. From 2010-2014, Keelin was Obstetric Lead on the Division of Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Neonatology at CUMH and was Clinical Director for Women and Children at Cork University Hospital from 2013-2014.  Keelin is a member of the National Working Party for the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Clinical Programme, the Clinical Advisory Group of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Speciality Training Committee of the RCPI, the National Perinatal Epidemiology Centre Perinatal Mortality Group and the HSE Bereavement Care Standards Development Group. Keelin’s main research interests include prenatal diagnosis, miscarriage, pregnancy loss, stillbirth and multiple pregnancy.

Jonathan Hourihane has been Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health in University College Cork, Ireland since 2005. He is co-PI of the BASELINE birth cohort study. He has ongoing projects in the following areas: clinical and proteomic characterisation of emerging food allergy syndromes, exploration of the link between skin barrier dysfunction and systemic allergic disorders, threshold doses of food allergens, immunomodulation of established allergic responses, prevention of allergic sensitisation, including use of pre-and probiotic-enhanced infant formulae and evaluation of quality of life in food allergic children. Jonathan’s primary area of clinical and research interest is in paediatric food allergy and anaphylaxis.

We all look forward to working with both Keelin and Jonathan, and warmly welcome them to the team.

The research found that children as young as one regularly use touchscreen devices, with most toddlers handling them competently by the age of two. Instead of being unhealthy for a child, time on touchscreen devices is not dissimilar to traditional forms of interactive play.

The study found that 82 per cent of parents owned a smart device and 87 per cent of them let their child play with it. Actions such as swiping, unlocking or searching on smartphones and tablets were skills possessed by the majority of children.  Half of parents said their child could unlock the screen, 91  per cent could swipe and 64 per cent could search for features.

The report, published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, said: “Interactive touchscreen applications offer a level of engagement not previously experienced with other forms of media and are more akin to traditional play. This opens up the potential… for both assessment of development and early intervention in high-risk children.”