condition common in tiny babies
A School of Medicine-based, multi-institutional study on necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is being supported by a $1 million grant from the Gerber Foundation.
NEC is an acute intestinal condition occurring in premature and low-birth-weight infants. It is the most common surgical emergency in babies and the most common gastrointestinal cause of death in babies.
The grant supports the Glaser Pediatric Research Network and funds the continuation of a surgical database to look at causes of progression in this disease. Dr. R. Lawrence Moss, section chief of pediatric surgery in Yale's Department of Surgery, is surgical director of the foundation and principal investigator of the study. The Yale-led consortium includes medical schools at Stanford University, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of California at San Francisco, the University of California at Los Angeles and Children's Hospital Boston.
NEC is an acute inflammatory condition that most frequently occurs in babies born prematurely. Death of intestinal tissue due to inadequate blood supply and other abnormalities may follow, leading to perforation of the gastrointestinal lining, periotonitis, respiratory failure and death.
The goal of the database is to determine risk factors for intestinal perforation requiring surgical intervention; the relationship between feeding practices and the progression of NEC; current practice patterns of antibiotic therapy and its impact on disease progression; and disease and patient specific factors that predict long term nutritional deficiency and gastroenterological disease.
"While advances in neonatal care have markedly improved outcomes for almost all causes of neonatal death and morbidity, the mortality from NEC is largely unchanged over the past 30 years," Moss says. "Almost all prior research on NEC has been performed in small numbers of patients at a single institution. The current effort represents the first multi-center coordinated effort to prospectively study this disease. In addition to developing the most robust clinical database ever attempted for NEC, the group is partnering with other investigators to identify genetic markers and serum protein inhibitors of disease progression."
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