Spotlight on: Antibiotics and Kidney Stone Risk
Recent
research
by CPCE faculty members found that children and adults treated with some oral antibiotics were at increased risk of developing kidney stones. This research advances what we already know about how antibiotics can alter the composition of the microbiome, and supports efforts to reduce children’s exposure to unnecessary antibiotics.
The association may partly explain an increase in kidney stones among children and adolescents. “The overall prevalence of kidney stones has risen by 70 percent over the past 30 years, with particularly sharp increases among adolescents and young women,” Dr. Tasian said in a
CHOP press release
.
“The reasons for the increase are unknown, but our findings suggest that oral antibiotics play a role, especially given that children are prescribed antibiotics at higher rates than adults,” Dr. Denburg added.
Click the links below to see coverage of this story by several regional, national, and international news organizations:
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Clinical Trials RAG Seminar
Date: June 12, 2018
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Roberts Center for Pediatric Research, Room 2160
L. Charles Bailey, MD, PhD, attending physician in the Cancer Center and academic investigator in clinical informatics at CHOP will be discussing PEDSnet, and how it can be leveraged for clinical trials. Lunch will be provided. See
flyer for more details. Please RSVP to
ClinicalTrialsRAG@email.chop.edu.
Behavioral Health Integration: Are Doctors the Barrier?
Date: June 14, 2018
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: CHOP Main Hospital, Stokes Auditorium
Kelly J. Kelleher, MD, MPH, Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health and ADS/CHlapaty Endowed Chair for Innovation in Pediatric Practics in the Colleges of Medicine and Public Health at The Ohio State University. He is also Vice President of Community Health and Services Research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Vice President for Health Services Research at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and Center Director in the Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. See
flyer for more details.
Penn MSHP 2018 Implementation Science Institute
Dates: June 19 - 21, 2018
Location: Jordan Medical Education Center
The purpose of the Implementation Science Institute is to provide participants with the tools to design and execute rigorous implementation science research. The Institute will give an introduction to the foundations of implementation science, cover implementation strategies and sustainability, tips for grant writing and skill development. Limited scholarships will be available for affiliates of CHOP. Register
here or contact
mshp@mail.med.upenn.edu for more information.
Conference: Code Red: Battling the Plague of Gun Violence
Date: June 21, 2018
Time: 8:00 am – 3:30 pm
Location: Thomas Jefferson University, Hamilton Building, 1001 Locust Street, Connelly Auditorium, Philadelphia
A day-long conference to educate about gun violence and create a network of health care providers committed to policy solutions. With keynote addresses from David Hemenway, Professor, Harvard School of Public Health & Allison Anderman, Managing Attorney, Giffords Law Center to Prevent Violence. Register
online.
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May 16, 2018
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Infants ≤60 days old are at increased risk of bacterial infections because of exposure to bacterial pathogens in the perinatal period and lack of vaccine-induced immunity. New research from Dr. Fran Balamuth and colleagues in the Febrile Young Infant Research Collaborative aims to help guide empiric treatment of infants ≤60 days old with suspected invasive bacterial infection by describing pathogens and their antimicrobial susceptibilities. Understanding the epidemiology of invasive bacterial infections in young infants could inform the selection of empiric antimicrobials while awaiting bacterial culture results in infants with suspected bacterial infection.
Youth experiencing homelessness are at risk for a variety of adverse outcomes. Given the widespread internet and social media use among adolescents in the U.S., these technologies may be used to address the needs of homeless youth and for outreach purposes, but little is known about how this group uses these resources. Dr. Nadia Dowshen and colleagues investigated how homeless adolescents use these technologies for general and health-related purposes. They found that while homeless youth experienced changes in the frequency, amount of time, and specific uses of the internet, they were still able to access the internet regularly, with smartphones being heavily utilized for internet access. Moving forward, mobile device friendly, adolescent-centered Web platforms may serve as an important resource for providing services to and connecting with young people struggling with homelessness.
The challenges of conducting pediatric randomized clinical trials has led to a majority of medications lacking pediatric indications and the subsequent common practice of off-label prescribing among pediatric practitioners in the U.S. Off-label medication use has been associated with an increased risk of medication-related adverse events in several studies. The goal of this study was to assess the feasibility of using EHR data to study rare outcomes associated with off-label prescriptions in children. Dr. Alexander Fiks, Dr. Robert Grundmeier and colleagues performed a case study of a commonly used pediatric medication, short-acting beta-2 agonist (SABA), and an extremely rare outcome, serious cardiac arrhythmia, to determine whether the risk of arrhythmias differs between children who are prescribed a SABA in an off-label manner as compared to those prescribed a SADA within the FDA-approved indications.
Advanced heart failure care, including ventricular assist devices (VADs) is associated with high resource utilization. The overall survival of pediatric patients supported with VADs has improved, but there are few data on the costs associated with VAD use in pediatric patients. A more complete understanding of the drivers of cost for pediatric patients supported with VADs may help to develop more effective cost-containment strategies and prioritize resources. This research from Dr. Joseph Rossano and colleagues tests the hypothesis that device type and adverse events are associated with increased resource utilization in pediatric patients supported with VADs. By merging a clinical database with an administrative database they were able to assess factors associated with costs that would not have been possible by evaluations of the databases separately.
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The Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation is accepting Letters of Intent from investigators for basic science, clinical, population/epidemiologic, and translational research on cardiomyopathies affecting children age 18 and younger. Grants of up to $50,000 will be awarded to studies focused on the causes, diagnosis, or treatment of dilated, hypertrophic, restrictive, arrhythmogenic right ventricular, and left ventricular non-compaction cardiomyopathy. The grants are designed to provide seed funding to help secure long-term funding by the National Institutes of Health and other major granting institutions.
Through the FWW Research Awards program, the foundation will award grants of up to $25,000 for research projects, with an emphasis on cardiovascular disease, female cancers, the role of hormones in disease, and/or stage-of-life health concerns such as pregnancy and menopause and diseases disproportionately affecting women.
The Elton John Aids Foundation is accepting Letters of Intent from organizations working with people who are most affected by HIV in the Americas, defined as the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, or Central or South America.
The Rheumatology Research Foundation is accepting applications for its 2018 Scientist Development Award, an annual program designed to provide support for a structured, formal, clinical, or basic science research training program for rheumatologists or health professionals in the field of rheumatology. Grants of up to $225,000 for up to three years will be awarded to individuals in the early stages of their careers or those without significant prior research experience who plan to embark on a career in biomedical and/or clinical research in arthritis and rheumatic diseases.
The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of the U.S. healthcare system. To that end, the foundation is inviting Letters of Inquiry for its Investigator-Initiated Health Services Research Grants program. The foundation will award seven or eight grants totaling $400,000. Priority will be given to studies that address issues of broad significance for the U.S. healthcare system and that have high potential to produce timely results and reach key target audiences.
The Future Leaders in Pain Research grant program was established in 2005 to fund pain research projects of doctoral-prepared investigators who have not yet attained NIH R01 level funding. The purpose of this grant is to encourage research in pain that will add to the existing body of knowledge, and to allow investigators to develop pilot data that will aid them in securing additional major grant funding for continued pain research.
The American Legion Child Welfare Foundation supports organizations that contribute to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual welfare of children. The foundation awards grants for the dissemination of information about new and innovative programs designed to benefit youth or information already possessed by well-established organizations. Projects must have the potential to help American children in a large geographic area (more than one state).
The foundation is accepting Letters of Intent from community-based organizations working in the areas of HIV/AIDS care and direct services, education, and research. Grants will be awarded in support of developing or established programs, with emphasis on the direct benefit to clients or the target audience.
The Gerber Foundation is accepting concept papers for research projects focused on improving the health, nutrition, and/or development of infants and young children. In particular, the foundation is looking for practical solutions that can be rapidly implemented on a broad scale and within a predictable time frame to clinical application. Major target areas include new diagnostic tools, new treatment regimens, symptom relief, preventative measures, assessment of deficiencies or excesses (vitamins, minerals, drugs, etc.), and risk assessment tools or measures for environmental hazards, trauma, etc. Grant amounts will range up to $350,000.
Last year, the NIH received approximately $30 billion in federal support. In spite of this amount, about 42,500 grants were not funded. To address these unfunded proposals, the NIH has a new Pilot Program that is designed to match researchers with nonprofit disease Foundations or with investments from private companies. Through a new collaboration between the NIH and the private contractor Leidos, researchers can now upload their unfunded NIH Proposals into an online portal at the Online Partnership to Accelerate Research (OnPAR). Foundations and other potential funders can review the NIH scores, and decide whether they might be interested in funding the Projects. Currently, this Pilot Program allows researchers with priority scores better than the 30th percentile to submit their abstracts. Interested Foundations might ask that a researcher send their full NIH Application along with its scores. The consensus opinion is that there are a lot of worthy grants being submitted to the NIH, but there is only so much funding available. OnPAR is one way of trying to match researchers with private Foundations.
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About CPCE
We are a pediatric research center dedicated to discovering and sharing knowledge about best practices in pediatric care by facilitating, organizing and centralizing the performance of clinical effectiveness research -- research aimed at understanding the best ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases in children. CPCE’s multidisciplinary team conducts research on a diverse range of clinical effectiveness topics grouped within four areas of research:
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