Maria Del Mar Romero Lopez
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Babies born extremely premature, before 28 weeks of pregnancy, often lack vitamin D at birth, and the shortage gets worse in their first month. Vitamin D matters for developing lungs, bones, brain and immune system.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Physiology
- Topics
vitamin D
extremely preterm infants
prematurity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test whether 800 IU/day of vitamin D started within 96 hours of birth, compared with 400 IU/day started after feeding is established, improves lung mechanics measured by oscillometry and reduces wheezing at age two in extremely premature infants from the ViDES trial.
- Compare bone density measured by tibial quantitative ultrasound, along with cognition and infection rates, at age two between the two vitamin D regimens, using Bayesian analysis to estimate the probability of benefit.
- Identify blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D and other vitamin D metabolites, measured by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, that are linked to the best outcomes in extremely premature infants.
- Explore whether race, ethnicity, sex or gestational age change the effect of the earlier, higher vitamin D dose on two-year outcomes.
More about the research
Its deficiency may contribute to the chronic lung disease, weak bones (osteopenia), infections and developmental problems common in these infants. Yet no one knows the best dose, or even what a healthy blood level is for such tiny babies. Current targets are borrowed from older children and adults, so hospital practice varies widely.
Why it matters
A better vitamin D regimen could be a simple, inexpensive way to improve lung and bone health in extremely premature infants. Results may help neonatal units decide how soon to start vitamin D, how much to give, and what blood level to aim for, reducing wide variation in current practice and potentially preventing problems linked to deficiency.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify features that impair cardiac growth from childhood into early adulthood after preterm birth, building sex-specific growth curves from repeated MRI measures of left ventricular volume and mass with mixed-effect quantile regression.
Andrew Dylag
University of Rochester, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Determine how the oxygen-rich newborn lung environment drives recruitment and seeding of lung megakaryocytes, by exposing mice to low-dose hyperoxia at different developmental ages and depleting these cells.
Thomas Raffay
Case Western Reserve University, OH·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine the molecular mechanisms by which GSNO protects the newborn lung, using GSNOR knockout mice exposed to high oxygen as a model of bronchopulmonary dysplasia.
The school
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston: 25 labs on PI Pages, $419M a year on research, 340 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
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