Posted March 30, 2018
Kathryn (Katie) Hollowood, a graduate student in the Biomedical Engineering Department working in Dr. Juergen Hahn's group has won the Most Impactful on Human Health award for her presentation given at the 44th Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference which was held on March 28-30, 2018, at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. The title of her presentation was "Analysis of Metabolites from Blood Samples of Pregnant Mothers and Probability of Autism Diagnosis of the Child".
Details about the conference talk are given below:
K. Hollowood, S. Melnyk, O. Pavliv, E. Sides, U. Kruger, S.J. James, and J. Hahn. Analysis of Metabolites from Blood Samples of Pregnant Mothers and Probability of Autism Diagnosis of the Child. 44th Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2018).
Abstract:
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is estimated to affect approximately one out every 68 children in the United States, leading to a high annual economic burden. Yet despite this prevalence, relatively little is known about the mechanism underlying ASD.
One promising approach is based upon that it has been shown that there are significant differences in measurements of the metabolites and the metabolite ratios between ASD and typically developing (TD) patients in the Folate One-Carbon Metabolism (FOCM) and Transsulfuration (TS) pathways. These differences have the potential for the development of a test supporting an ASD diagnosis. However, the key question is how early differences could be detected that point towards an ASD diagnosis in the future. In this work, we focus on metabolites of the mothers during pregnancy as the earliest possible timepoint of detection.