COVID impacts on Neurodevelopment
May 4, 2022
Presenter:
Dr. Dumitriu is co-author of the recent JAMA article Association of Birth During the COVID-19 Pandemic with Neurodevelopmental Status at 6 Months in Infants with and Without In Utero Exposure to Maternal SARS-CoV-2 Infection and was featured in this article in the Jan. 12, 2022 issue of Nature. In this webinar, Dr. Dumitriu shares the findings from the study and recommendations for addressing potential impacts on infants.
Dani Dumitriu, MD, PhD, is trained as a general pediatrician, neuroscientist and pediatric environmental health scientist. She joined Columbia University as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (in Psychiatry) in November 2018. She dedicates 80% of her time to basic science research into the neurobiological basis of resilience as the Principal Investigator of the DOOR lab (Developmental Origins of Resilience lab) at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and 20% time to caring for newborns in the Well-Baby Nursery at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York.
The overarching goal of Dr. Dumitriu's research program is to understand and harness the neurocircuits of resilience to spearhead novel approaches to primary prevention. This is motivated by the observation that during the last century, medicine has made unprecedented progress in the treatment of disease, with a lack of parallel advancement in the prevention of disease. Consequently, the largest current worldwide disease burden comes from preventable mental and physical illnesses, such as depression, anxiety, diabetes, and hypertension. Stressful life events, particularly during critical developmental periods, have been linked to increased risk of virtually all diseases, including metabolic and cardiovascular ones, and a significant effort is underway to understand stress-induced biological consequences. However, even in the presence of the most severe stressors, some individuals remain resistant to the development of stress-induced pathology. Identifying the neurobiological basis for this natural resilience can therefore lead to the development of novel preventative strategies aimed at strengthening resiliency circuits.
Materials:
Access the JAMA article here.
Webinar Recording: