Clinical Interventions to Mitigate Neurodevelopmental Risk

Child Development Clinical Trial

Official title: Clinical Interventions to Mitigate Neurodevelopmental Risk

Status Terminated

Clinical Trial Summary

Family Nurture Intervention (FNI) has been shown to facilitate emotional connection and long-term child developmental progress in the NICU population. It has been theorized that FNI also promotes autonomic co-regulation and physiological synchrony between the mother-child dyad. The goal of the pilot study is to assess how a short one-time FNI session between at-risk mother and child dyads in the Well Baby Nursery (WBN) influences physiological synchrony, emotional connection, and developmental changes both short and long-term.

Clinical Trial Description

The long-term objective of this work is to improve cognitive, emotional, and social developmental trajectories in at-risk children. Specially, this pilot study will assess the feasibility of Family Nurture Intervention (FNI) in the neonatal period during the infants' stay in the Well Baby Nursery (WBN) in improving developmental trajectories.

FNI is a family-based intervention that facilitates and strengthens the mother-infant emotional connection through a structured guided interaction by a trained provider. Mother-infant emotional connection is known to affect various developmental processes and improve overall health. FNI was previously shown to be efficacious in improving several long-term health outcomes in preterm infants.

In this study, the goal is to extend of the findings of FNI to another population of at risk infants - infants born to mothers suffering from gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). These infants are generally healthy but at higher risk than controls in developing mild cognitive and motor impairments.

In this pilot phase, infants exposed to GDM and case-matched control infants will both receive FNI: (GDM+FNI and Control+FNI). These two groups will be compared to an already existing protocol and pool of participants who did not receive FNI: (GDM+no FNI and Control+no FNI). This allows the study to evaluate both GDM versus control infants as well as the presence of FNI versus no FNI.

The goal is to pilot the potential role of a short, one-time session of FNI in promoting neurodevelopment among an at-risk wellbaby nursery population. This will be achieved by comparing developmental milestones, such as cognitive and motor development, memory, attention, and emotion regulation at 6 and 15 months, between participants who received the FNI and those who did not. Another goal is to elucidate the role FNI has on autonomic co-regulation and mother-infant synchrony through physiological recordings during the FNI session in the WBN. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Child Development
• Diabetes Mellitus
• Diabetes Mellitus, Gestational
• Diabetes, Gestational
• Mother-Infant Interaction

• NCT number: NCT04233489
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: Columbia University
• Status: Terminated
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: January 3, 2020
• Completion date: March 13, 2020