Multi-institutional researchers offer first look at early data on childhood brain development
In western Virginia, the research effort anchored at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC is enrolling 300 pregnant women and tracking them and their babies through age 10.
Researchers from across the nation, including Virginia Tech scientists, have made the first release of data from the nation’s largest long-term study of early brain and child development.
The effort, called the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study Consortium, unites researchers from 27 institutions across the country to explore influences on human brain development in utero and during childhood.
In the western Virginia area, the research team is in the process of recruiting 300 pregnant women and following them and their babies through age 10, according to Brittany Howell, associate professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, who is leading the Virginia Tech arm of the study.
“We’ve had just over 1,000 visits,” Howell said. “This is a 10-year long-study, and just being able to involve them for two whole years is amazing.”
Howell, who is also a faculty member in the Department of Human Development and Family Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, is joined by two other principal investigators at Virginia Tech: Martha Ann Bell, University Distinguished Professor and professor of psychology, and Kathy Hosig, professor population health sciences and director for the Virginia Tech Center for Public Health Practice and Research.
Nationally, the initial data release includes biomedical and behavioral data from more than 1,400 pregnant women and their children, collected across three early developmental stages from birth through 9 months of age.
“We are providing a significant chunk of the non-urban families who are participating in the study,” Howell said. “What’s especially exciting is we are giving a voice to groups that haven’t had a voice in research. These are the families who will be impacted by this study — they aren’t just represented, they are included in the data. Decisions based on the data won’t be made without their involvement.”
The team goal is to recruit 300 pregnant women from across western Virginia, following them and their families from before birth through age 10.
As of this week, 146 Virginia families — 71 percent of them rural or suburban — have enrolled 149 children in the study.
Out of the entire sample, researchers are trying to recruit 25 percent of infants with prenatal substance exposure. The local Virginia Tech sample includes about 60 percent exposed infants, representing nearly 5 percent of all exposed infants in the study.
As the study continues, the data will provide scientists worldwide with a new resource to explore critical questions about the role of substances and other environmental, social, and biological factors on early childhood brain development.
"This data release is a game-changer," said Christina Chambers, co-director of the HBCD Study Administrative Core and professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
Data was released in collaboration with colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Minnesota, and the J. Craig Venter Institute, and hosted by the new NIH Brain Development Cohorts Data Hub. The data hub also hosts data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and coordinated through the University of California San Diego.
“Data from these studies will fuel research around the world answering new questions about young people’s health and well-being that we, as study investigators, might never have conceived of,” said Charles Nelson, co-director of the HBCD Study Administrative Core and a professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School.
