Blog

The stress preterm infants experience at birth can carry on throughout a lifetime and cause negative health impacts later in life, necessitating the routine inclusion of birth history in medical records and the development of clinical guidelines for adults born preterm, the longest continuously running study of individuals born preterm in the United States has shown.

University of Rhode Island College of Nursing Professor Amy D’Agata is continuing the work that began in the 1980s with a group of babies born preterm at Women & Infants Hospital. Involving 215 people born 35 years ago-including a control group of full-term babies, and preterm babies born at 22 to 36 weeks-the study tracks the successes and difficulties preterm babies continue to face into adulthood, and compares them to the group of participants born full term. The project has so far garnered more than $10 million in research grant funding.

D’Agata, who took over as principal researcher after the retirement of Professor Emeritus Mary Sullivan, has published the most recent results in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The published paper focuses physiological and psychological health outcomes that D’Agata and her team of researchers have identified as the study participants approach 40 years old. Those born preterm have shown a higher risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, increased abdominal fat, and low bone density. Psychologically, the group tends to internalize problems, often resulting in increased levels of depression and anxiety.

“Preterm birth is not just a neonatal issue. It, in fact, is a lifelong condition,” D’Agata said the study shows. “For individuals who have medical complications early in life, we are now seeing an increased risk of different chronic health issues later in life. We are now realizing that there is a very strong link between what happens to you early in life and later health outcomes.”

The study offers important takeaways for health-care clinicians, who are not always aware a patient was born preterm because birth history is not commonly included in adult medical records. D’Agata’s study is showing the need to include the information, and to develop adult screening guidelines for individuals who have a history of preterm birth. The work is also helping people who have been impacted by preterm birth understand that their birth history should be included in their medical records and should be considered in the context of their overall health.

In this country, millions of people born preterm have grown into adulthood and are now seeing clinicians across primary care and various specialties, yet providers rarely ask about birth history. We are urging that birth history be included as a standard question on every adult intake form. Health cannot be fully optimized if we overlook such a critical assessment piece. Understanding an individual’s birth history, alongside growing research identifying increased health risks for those born preterm and the development of targeted clinical guidelines, will advance health equity for survivors of early birth. We believe a paradigm shift is needed in health care that recognizes preterm birth as a chronic condition requiring lifelong monitoring and support.”

Amy D’Agata, University of Rhode Island College of Nursing Professor

While the study’s most recent results were just published in JAMA Network Open in July, D’Agata is already looking toward the next set of findings. Continuing to work with fellow URI professor Justin Parent, D’Agata is examining epigenetic age acceleration among individuals born preterm. Understanding any differences in epigenetic aging that may exist between preterm and full-term born adults may be another approach to understanding long-term health.

When faced with difficult tasks, sometimes people hit a mental wall and make the decision to “sleep on it.” Returning to the task after sleeping, they often perform better. Why? Rhythmic brain activity during sleep transforms task-related information into stronger, longer-term memory. A new JNeurosci paper on research led by Dara Manoach, from Harvard Medical School, advances understanding of where in the brain this rhythmic activity appears to improve motor learning. 

In the study, 25 participants learned a typing sequence while the researchers recorded their brain activity. After training, brain recordings continued as study participants napped. During sleep, cortical brain areas active during training had more rhythmic activity. Increased brain rhythms in these areas correlated with how much participants improved in the task after the nap. Notably, pre- and postnap task performance had different neural correlates; learning during training was associated with increased brain rhythms in movement execution areas during sleep, while postnap performance was linked to increased brain rhythms in movement planning areas during sleep. Says Manoach, “Brain rhythms occur everywhere in the brain during sleep. But the rhythms in these regions increase after learning, presumably to stabilize and enhance memory.” 

The researchers theorize from their work that brain rhythms in motor execution areas may represent the memory of a task, while the rhythms in motor planning areas improve future performance. 

Temporomandibular disorder (TMD) limits jaw function and is so painful that it lessens the quality of life. Botulinum toxin-also known as botox-is emerging as an effective treatment option, but there are concerns about side effects, like muscle dysfunction. Eungyung Kim and Yu Shin Kim, from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, led a study using a mouse model of TMD to explore the possibility of using botox as a treatment. 

In their JNeurosci paper, the researchers discovered that injecting botox directly into the male mouse temporomandibular joint (TMJ) instead of surrounding muscle tissue reduced TMD-related pain without causing side effects. More specifically, hypersensitivity and pain from TMD were mitigated without impairing general movement abilities and feeding behavior. The researchers also found that the botox injections they delivered reduced TMD-related neural activity. On a molecular level, mice that received botox injections into the TMJ had less expression of proteins that promote pain. 

While sex differences remain unexplored, according to the authors, this work suggests it may be possible to overcome botox side effects by avoiding muscle tissue and injecting the toxin directly into the TMJ. 

A Kyoto University research team has developed a pain-reliever that is comparable to morphine but does not have serious side effects.

Morphine, often administered to cancer patients, has serious adverse effects such as breathing issues and addiction.

According to the team, the newly developed drug, Adriana, is a groundbreaking painkiller, which works on a completely different mechanism to morphine and other existing synthetic opioids. The drug has the potential to revolutionize pain control in the medical field, the team said.

The team also expects that the drug will help resolve the so-called opioid epidemic, in which a large number of deaths occur mainly due to overdoses of opioids.

Its findings were published in the online edition of the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When a person encounters a life-threatening situation, norepinephrine, an organic chemical secreted from the brain, suppresses pain.

For its study, the team focused on the human body regulating oversecretion of norepinephrine. By introducing a new research technology, the team succeeded in developing a drug blocking such a control function for the first time in the world.

In a clinical trial conducted at the Kyoto University Hospital between January 2023 and December 2024, the team confirmed the new drug’s efficiency to a certain extent for patients including 20 who underwent lung cancer surgery.

The team plans to conduct a clinical trial in the United States for 400 postsurgery patients in 2026, aiming to put Adriana into practical use in 2028.

“We hope that the new drug will help cancer patients who previously had no choice but to use opioids live their lives without pain as well as a need to worry about addiction or serious side effects,” Masatoshi Hagiwara, a professor at the university, said.