# ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON NEURODEVELOPMENTAL OUTCOME IN INFANTS BORN VERY PRETERM

> **NIH NIH UH3** · WOMEN AND INFANTS HOSPITAL-RHODE ISLAND · 2021 · $3,299,402

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Upwards of one-third of infants born <30 weeks postmenstrual age suffer long term neurodevelopmental
deficits. The prevalence rate of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) is approximately 5 times higher in these
infants than in the general population. The purpose of this Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes
(ECHO) application is to leverage our ongoing NIH (1R01HD072267-01A) longitudinal multisite prospective
study of approximately 600 infants born <30 weeks PMA from birth to age 2 entitled “Neonatal Neurobehavior
and Outcomes in Very Preterm Infants.” Our long-term goal is to discern which of these infants are most likely
to become developmentally impaired, a personalized medicine approach that could lead to interventions that
prevent or mitigate later deficits. Our overall objective in ECHO is to follow these children through age 7 and
determine potential mechanisms that lead to developmental outcome in these children. In order to do this,
these children need to be studied in situ. Our hypothesis is that environmental exposures, behavioral, genetic
variation and epigenetic factors are required to understand the mechanisms involved. We plan to determine
how prenatal, perinatal and postnatal environmental exposures (e.g., physical, demographic, maternal
psychological, medical, chemical), DNA methylation, and infant neurobehavior at NICU discharge) will be
related to child measures of attention, cognition, emotion, social, language, behavioral and motor development
at ages 5, 6, and 7 and ASD diagnosis. We expect genetic variation to modify the effects of environmental
exposures on these child outcomes and plan to develop an algorithm to identify which individual infants will be
developmentally impaired at ages 5-7. We also plan to determine the trajectories of DNA methylation and
neurodevelopmental measures (attention, cognition, emotion, social, language, behavioral and motor
development) over ages 4-7, determine how neurodevelopmental trajectories “track” the trajectory of DNA
methylation and determine how these trajectories are modified by environmental exposures and genetic
variation. Our cohort is of substantive import for the entire synthetic cohort effort of ECHO to address how pre-,
peri-, and postnatal environmental exposures impact childhood development in a multitude of multi-level ways.
The perspective proffered ECHO will help ECHO develop a unique model to better understand mechanisms of
development, and use trajectory analysis to investigate sensitive periods and inflection points.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10240311
- **Project number:** 5UH3OD023347-06
- **Recipient organization:** WOMEN AND INFANTS HOSPITAL-RHODE ISLAND
- **Principal Investigator:** Barry M. Lester
- **Activity code:** UH3 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $3,299,402
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-09-21 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10240311

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10240311, ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON NEURODEVELOPMENTAL OUTCOME IN INFANTS BORN VERY PRETERM (5UH3OD023347-06). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10240311. Licensed CC0.

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