Brain Awareness Week 2021: The developing brain’s response to stress
Posted on: 21 March 2021
For our final brain research story for Brain Awareness Week 2021, we chat with Dr Eva Jimenez-Mateos, Assistant Professor in Physiology in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, School of Medicine about her research into neonatal encephalopathy and how she has brought her knowledge of seizures in adults to neonatal research.
Describe your area of research and what you do?
Hypoxia ischemia encephalopathy (HIE) or neonatal encephalopathy is the result of systemic oxygen deprivation commonly occurring in full-term infants at birth. HIE is one of the leading paediatric neurological conditions causing long-term disabilities. At least 25% of surviving children are left with significant long-term disabilities, indeed HIE is in the top 10 diseases with the highest lifelong global burden.
Babies with HIE at birth will face motor and non-motor disabilities such as cerebral palsy, autism, epilepsy and learning impairment, and these conditions will contribute to adverse long-term quality of life. Understanding the triggers mechanisms with result on the neuropsychological outcomes is necessary for testing novel therapeutic strategies which will improve the lives of patients and relatives.
My lab is trying to answer the following questions: how the infant brain (in the first days of life) responds to early life stress, how these responses drive the long-lasting neuropsychological outcomes, and can we improve the conditions of the babies?
How significant is neonatal encephalopathy?
The incidence of neonatal encephalopathy is 3.0-5.0 out of every 1,000 births. The outcomes for babies suffering from neonatal brain damage are particularly poor, with a 23% mortality rate (1 million neonatal deaths per year worldwide) and 70% of the survivors developing long-lasting neurological disorders (e.g. cerebral palsy, epilepsy, learning disabilities).
In Europe, the long-term health costs associated with neonatal brain damage are high, ~€800,000 per patient over the lifetime. Costs associated with neonatal brain damage include medical (medication and treatments), physiotherapy (physical, occupational and rehabilitative therapy), and special educational costs. And importantly, in most cases, one of the parents needs to leave work to care for the long-term medical needs of the infants.
Did any of your research outcomes surprise you?
In every research area, we face every day with surprising findings. Probably, every day we get more surprise to see that the brain in babies is not a small version of the adult brain, it has, indeed, its own physiology and we cannot extrapolate our knowledge from adults. Every finding which brings us closely to understand how the brain responds in our first days of life, we will bring us to develop better treatment for babies and infants.
How do you see your findings being translated into therapies for patients?
My research is trying to understand how the developing brain response to stress, little is known about the process which will trigger the development of neuropsychological outcomes after hypoxia at birth. I hope that my findings will give some clarity and answers to the parents and relatives of babies suffering from hypoxia at birth. In the long term, I hope my research will support the development of novel therapeutics strategics which will help clinicians, infants and their parents.