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Preterm birth is a leading cause of death among children under the age of five. Knowing how often babies are born preterm is essential for developing and evaluating health programs and policies. However, many low-resource countries do not have reliable data on this issue.
Dr. and Dr. are pioneering a solution for measuring preterm birth rates using newborn blood samples spotted onto paper. In Canada and other countries this practice is routinely used to screen for genetic diseases and metabolic disorders, but using it to assess preterm birth is new. Using these blood spots and big data analysis, the team has developed an algorithm capable of accurately estimating gestational age to within one to two weeks.
鈥淲e鈥檙e using metabolic fingerprints 鈥 unique patterns in specific molecules found in the blood 鈥 to help estimate gestational age,鈥 said Dr. Wilson, an internal medicine specialist and senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa. 鈥淚f it works, this could be crucial to global efforts to reduce preterm birth and improve newborn health.鈥
Dr. Wilson鈥檚 team originally derived and validated the algorithm using data from Ontario newborns. This work has been published in the and . The team is currently the algorithm using newborn data from Bangladesh, Zambia, China and the Philippines. This new funding will allow the investigators to pilot the algorithm in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and provide preterm birth estimates to participating countries.
This project is a collaboration with Dr. of Stanford University and Dr. of Newborn Screening Ontario and the Children鈥檚 Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. Other researchers from The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa who are involved in this project include Drs. , , , and Malia Murphy.
Dr. Darmstadt鈥檚 team will select and manage new international sites for the project, while Dr. Chakraborty will lead the analysis of the newborn samples. Dr. Wilson and his team will apply the algorithm and manage the results. Families that participate in the project will also have access to screening for treatable genetic disorders.
This new grant (worth US $948,502) follows two previous grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Ottawa team (worth US $1.4 million and US $100,000). The foundation has also awarded US $2 million to Dr. Darmstadt and his team for their part of the project.
See related article 鈥溾 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dr. Wilson leads .
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