View clinical trials related to Neurodevelopmental Outcome.
Filter by:Preterm birth, or birth before 37 weeks' gestation, is increasingly common, occurring in 8 percent of pregnancies in Canada. Preterm birth is associated with many health complications, particularly when the birth happens before 29 weeks' gestation. At this gestational age, the lungs are not fully developed and it is not uncommon for infants to have problems breathing at the time of birth. One complication that can arise is when an infant stops breathing and needs to be resuscitated. When preterm babies need to be resuscitated doctors must take special care because of the small infant size and the immaturity of the brain and lungs. Oxygen is used to resuscitate babies who need it, but unfortunately there is disagreement about the best oxygen concentration to use. Oxygen concentration is important because both too much and too little oxygen can cause brain injury. This research aims to fill this knowledge gap by participating in an international clinical trial to compare the effects of resuscitating babies less than 29 weeks' gestational age with either a low oxygen concentration or a high oxygen concentration. The oxygen concentrations have been selected using the best available knowledge. This will be a cluster randomized trial where each participating hospital will be randomized to either 30 or 60 percent oxygen for the recruitment of 30 infants, and afterwards randomized to the other group for the recruitment of another 30 infants. After the trial, the investigator will determine whether the babies resuscitated with low oxygen or those resuscitated with high oxygen have better survival and long-term health outcomes. This research fills a critical knowledge gap in the care of extremely preterm babies and will impact their survival both here in Canada and internationally.
Pregestational diabetes (PGD) during pregnancy may be associated with an increased rate of spontaneous abortions, intrauterine death and congenital anomalies among the offspring. Although the prevalence of congenital anomalies among the offspring of diabetic mothers is reduced as a result of the improvement of the glycemic control in the early pregnancy, the rate of congenital anomalies is increased and there seems to be an increased rate of neurodevelopmental disorders including some fine and gross motor deficits as well as increased rate of inattention and/or hyperactivity. In gestational diabetes, that develops in the second half of pregnancy (past the period of major organogenesis), there seems to be no increase in the rate of major congenital anomalies but there are some developmental disorders in the offspring. The exposure of the developing embryo and fetus to diabetic environment (i.e. hyperglycemia, hyperketonemia ext), is known to cause increased oxidative stress and significant changes in gene expression as observed in several experimental diabetic models. We hypothesize that diabetic environment may also cause long lasting epigenetic changes. It is therefore our purpose to evaluate these possible epigenetic changes and correlate their presence with the degree and time of onset of diabetes, (i.e. whether from the beginning as in PGD or in the second half of pregnancy as in GD), the degree of oxidative stress and with the neurodevelopmental outcome of the offspring. Diabetic pregnancies will be compared to a similar number of normal pregnancies in all parameters studied.
The study included analysis of longitudinal recordings of amplitude-integrated EEG (aEEG) tracings on a weekly basis in preterm infants and evaluation of their neurodevelopmental outcome at the age of three years. Aim of the study was to observe if there is a correlation of the aEEG tracings of the first weeks of life to later neurodevelopmental outcome and to evaluate if aEEG can be used as prognostic tool.
Premature infants with iron deficiency if supplemented with more elemental iron than the routine 2mg/kg/day will have improved brain development.