Research

Depression occurs in up to 14 percent of kids ages 13 to 17 and can lead to risky sexual behaviors, substance abuse or even suicide. Unfortunately, few teens utilize mental health services that can help manage depression symptoms. But a study by Seattle Children’s Research Institute suggests parents play a strong role in helping teens receive mental health care.

To find out why some depressed adolescents get help from mental health services and others do not, Seattle Children’s researchers studied 113 teens who screened positive for depression within non-profit health system Group Health. Despite the fact that all of the patients had insurance and access to mental health care, just 52 percent used mental health services. Read full post »

In 2014, the Seattle Children’s Research Institute will implement life-saving projects, begin new studies to keep children safe and continue searching for ways to prevent and cure diseases that threaten some of our youngest patients. We are celebrating the New Year by highlighting some of the work that has researchers excited about 2014.

Looking forward to saving lives

Evelyn Tomlin was born April 16, 2013. Doctors in Oregon did not know that she had SCID until she was 3 months old.

On Jan. 1, years of work by Children’s research and clinical staff came to fruition when a test for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) was added to Washington’s newborn screening panel for all babies born in our state. Known as the “bubble boy” disease, SCID is a group of inherited disorders that cause severe abnormalities of the immune system. Babies with this disease often show no symptoms at birth, but after a few months they are unable to fight infections. Common illnesses, such as the flu or an ear infection, can be life-threatening for a child with SCID.

“Babies with SCID benefit from their mom’s immune system at birth, but once that goes away they have very little ability to defend themselves,” said Troy Torgerson, MD, director of Children’s Immunology Diagnostic Lab.

If caught early, more than 90 percent of SCID cases can be cured with a bone marrow transplant or gene therapy. But once a baby contracts an infection, survival rates drop to 50 to 60 percent.

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Thousands of children are diagnosed each year with hydrocephalus, a condition in which the body can’t properly drain the fluid that builds up around the brain. Physicians commonly treat hydrocephalus by implanting a shunt in the brain to carry the excess fluid to other parts of the body.

Shunts save lives, but too often they also lead to infections that can require multiple surgeries and leave patients hospitalized for weeks.

Physicians don’t know why shunt infections are so common, or why they sometimes come back over and over again. But an investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute may have found a clue to this longstanding mystery.

In a study published today in PLOS ONE, Tamara Simon, MD, MSPH, and her colleagues outline a discovery that could help understand, treat and prevent future infections. Researchers used genetic sequencing to conduct the first-ever inventory of microbiota – the complex assortment of bacteria and fungi – found in the cerebrospinal fluid of eight children with shunt infections. They identified a surprisingly large and diverse variety of pathogens, including many never before associated with shunt infections. This suggests that many different pathogens may conspire to drive the infections.

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The faster medical research moves the more quickly cures can be found for countless children’s diseases. But one of the greatest delays researchers face when trying to solve medical problems is finding enough patients to study.

“Enrolling patients in a clinical trial to study a rare condition could take years,” said Mark Del Beccaro, MD, a researcher and vice president of medical affairs at Seattle Children’s.

But now a federally funded non-profit has awarded Children’s and seven other pediatric hospitals funding to create a national network of patient data with the goal of speeding up medical research and improving patient care. Read full post »

With frost appearing on our windshields and temperatures dropping, we find ourselves again nearing the height of the holiday season. And with only one week left to go before Christmas, holiday shoppers are on a tight deadline to find the latest deals and steals before time runs out. But there’s no need to worry because at area Bargain Boutiques, the deals are not only good for your pocketbook, they also benefit children.

There is little doubt that there is a tremendous amount of shopping that goes on during December. According to the American Research Group the average American spends nearly $1000 on gifts around the holidays each year.

What you might not know is that that this increased spending is also accompanied by an increase in giving around the holidays each year. If you talk to Eva Campbell from Seattle Children’s, she’d probably tell you that shopping for gifts and donating to a worthy cause don’t need to be done separately.

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Jack Rupert MacDonald

UPDATE: In honor of Jack MacDonald’s $75.04 million legacy gift to Seattle Children’s Research Institute, we will name the Research Institute’s Building 1 in his honor. Effective Jan. 31, the new name of Building 1, which is located in downtown Seattle, will be the Jack R. MacDonald Building. Signage on the building reflecting the new name will be up by the end of this month.

Today, Seattle Children’s announced it has received the single largest charitable gift in its 106-year history, and also the largest known gift to a U.S. children’s hospital for pediatric research. The landmark bequest, a $187.6 million charitable trust from the estate of Jack Rupert MacDonald, was given to Seattle Children’s, the University of Washington (UW) School of Law and The Salvation Army – organizations that held great meaning for Jack.

Each year, the three organizations will receive income earned by the trust. Children’s will receive 40 percent of the yearly income, which in the first year will equate to approximately $3.75 million. MacDonald’s pledge to Children’s was first announced in 2011 as being anonymous.

At Children’s, MacDonald’s legacy will be used to fund pediatric research taking place at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Jack decided to support research when he learned it was an important priority for the hospital and will support the organization’s quest to find better treatments and cures for childhood disease worldwide.

“Jack’s gift is an inspiration to all of us. It is one of the largest ever to a children’s hospital. And it is the largest single gift in support of pediatric research,” said Doug Picha, President of Seattle Children’s Hospital Foundation and a friend to Jack for many years. “It is transformational not only in what it will do to help us find more cures and better treatments, but also by forcing each of us personally to reflect on the legacy we would like to leave.”

So, you may ask, who was Jack MacDonald? Who was the man behind this incredible gift that will impact so many lives for generations to come?

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Playing games for charity may sound too good to be true, but that’s exactly what Brandon Bozzi, Morgan Belford and their Seattle startup Game it Forward had in mind when they created Quingo, a game which benefits six organizations, including Seattle Children’s. Quingo, which combines charitable giving, bingo and trivia, supports Children’s by donating a portion of its revenue to fund hospital specific initiatives, like research.

As research is a primary focus at Children’s, a project was created with Quingo to help exclusively fund pediatric research that could one day lead to better treatments and new cures for childhood diseases.

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More than one third of children and adolescents are obese or overweight, and more and more families are coming to Jason Mendoza, MD, MPH, for advice on how to help their kids lose extra pounds. But obesity treatments can be difficult to complete and are often expensive. Mendoza is testing a new approach that aims to prevent obesity using ideas from eras when obesity was uncommon.

“I’m looking at whether getting children to walk or ride their bikes to school can increase children’s physical activity and reduce their risk of obesity,” said Mendoza, a principal investigator in the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and associate professor at the University of Washington.

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There are landmark moments in every child’s life that a parent likes to document. The first time he rolls over, crawls, stands and walks are among the moments worth noting. But for Alysia and Brendan Browne, the moments they got really excited about for their son, Landon, relate to his hearing.

“When he said, ‘butter’ for the first time, I threw open the front door and yelled, ‘He said, butter!” The neighbors probably thought I was crazy,” Alysia said, with a smile.

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Daniel Rubens, MD, is not your average researcher. He’ll tell you for starters, that he’s not technically a researcher, but rather an anesthesiologist. His team is small:  Travis Allen, a nurse anesthetist at Seattle Children’s, volunteers his free time to work alongside Rubens, who is also supported by staff and leaders at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington.

Since 2007, Rubens has spent no more than $100,000 on his research on SIDS, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. A big chunk of those funds, $60,000, came from a fundraiser held in Florida by a mother who lost her child to SIDS. She read about Rubens’ research, contacted him out of the blue and wanted to support his efforts.

Rubens’ experience dealing with infants in crisis inspired him to seek an answer to the unsolved mystery of SIDS, and his latest study published in Neuroscience—offers up more clues on the premise that the syndrome may be related to dysfunction within the inner ear. “I was always drawn to the mystery of SIDS,” Rubens said. “I’ve read the literature over the years, and it struck me that there’s so much we don’t know,” he said, when asked what initially piqued his interest.

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