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Lifeline Online Late Fall Early Winter 2009 Issue 103  FEATURED Exercise, healthy hearts and healthy brains: LSI researchers document a vital connectionIn addition to Kathleen Gustafson, several Life Span researchers are focusing on the connection between exercise and improved cognitive functioning and overall physical health in children, adults, the elderly and people with disabilities. Read Full Story LSI scientist studies impact of mom's wellness on baby's long-term healthIt's long been known that exposure to toxic elements or disease during critical periods of fetal development can compromise a child's physical and cognitive development. Now an LSI-affiliated neuroscientist is honing in on the opposite -- how the wellness choices a pregnant woman makes can benefit the life-long health of her offspring. Read Full Story IN THE NEWS Promises kept: Autism center holds first statewide conference for families and practitionersWhen it was founded in July 2008, the Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training (K-CART) vowed to widely disseminate practical knowledge backed by research to those Kansans whose lives are touched by Autism Spectrum Disorders as individuals with ASD, family members, practitioners and policy makers. Read Full Story ADMINISTRATIVE ANNOUNCEMENTS Groovin' to move at Juniper GardensThe Juniper Gardens Children's Project has launched a fundraising effort called “Move'n On Up” to support the purchase of furniture and equipment for its new quarters in the Children's Campus in downtown Kansas City, Kan. Juniper Gardens will be on the third floor of the new $15.5 million facility currently under construction on the corner of 5th Street and Minnesota Avenue. Read Full Story HONORS Grad students receive Friends of the Life Span Institute research awardsEmily Zimmerman and Xiaoyi (Kimberly) Hu are the winners of the fifth annual Friends of the Life Span Institute Graduate Research Assistant Awards. Read Full Story MILESTONES Zamarripa retires after 40 years of service; receives first Jay Turnbull FellowshipEdward Zamarripa, LSI director of finance and administration, was honored for his 40 years of service by all four LSI directors, Richard Schiefelbusch, Stephen Schroeder, Steve Warren and John Colombo, at a November 30 reception at the Adams Alumni Center. He also was awarded the first Jay Turnbull Fellowship by Rud Turnbull, co-director of the Beach Center on Disability. Read Full Story PROJECT DEVELOPMENT NEWS During this quarter, LSI investigators generated 45 new proposals and received four new grants. Two of the awards and 12, or 27 percent, of the new proposals were generated by junior investigators. Seven of the proposals, or 16 percent, came from investigators submitting for the first time through LSI. See the Complete List |
FEATURED LSI scientist studies impact of mom's wellness on baby's long-term healthIt's long been known that exposure to toxic elements or disease during critical periods of fetal development can compromise a child's physical and cognitive development. Now an LSI-affiliated neuroscientist is honing in on the opposite -- how the wellness choices a pregnant woman makes can benefit the life-long health of her offspring.  Kathleen Gustafson Gustafson is associate director of the Fetal Biomagnetometry Laboratory at the Hoglund Brain Imaging Center, which has one of only two dedicated fetal biomagnetometers in the world. The device is used to measure the magnetic field surrounding electrical currents in the fetus and to record fetal cardiovascular functions and breathing movements. Heart rate variabilityIn a pilot study, Gustafson and May showed that the fetuses of women who exercised had a lower heart rate and increased heart-rate variability. In fact, the fetus of an exercising mother ran about 10 beats per minute slower than the fetus of a non-exercising mother. A slower heart rate means that the heart requires fewer beats to do its work, which is good. Heart rate variability is also good since the heart rate should accelerate prior to making body movements and decrease to conserve energy. “The ability to vary heart rate is critical to survival,” Gustafson said. In a follow-up study, Gustafson and May showed that the fetuses of exercising mothers had improved “breathing movements,” meaning that exercise did not deprive the developing babies of oxygen. Fetal breathing movements (the expansion and contraction of the chest wall) are essential for lung development. Gustafson has also used fetal magnetocardiology (fMCG) to study the effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on fetal heart rate and heart-rate variability. Gustafson found that fetuses exposed to maternal smoking are less able to vary their heart rate and take longer to react to and habituate to sounds outside of the womb. Nutrition and visionGustafson has been involved in several multi-center trials to investigate the effects of essential fatty acid supplements on infant visual development. She holds national and international patents for her role in a trial that showed that the nutritional content of a new formula for premature infants was essential for optimal visual development. In other studies led by Susan Carlson, A.J. Rice Professor of Nutrition at KUMC, and John Colombo, professor of psychology and director of LSI, Gustafson is measuring the effect of different levels of fatty acid supplementation, primarily docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), on infant visual outcomes, cardiac outcomes and brain activity. Gustafson also is measuring infant visual outcomes in a randomized clinical trial (again, with Carlson-Colombo) where women are assigned to either a DHA supplement or placebo during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. Gustafson's work is contributing to growing body of research on the developmental origins of health and disease. Gustafson said, “We're becoming increasingly aware that maternal health during pregnancy, which includes nutrition and exercise, will be key to the prevention of chronic disease for generations to come. Interventions aimed at reducing obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease may need to begin in utero.” Gustafson earned her Ph.D. in Visual Electrophysiology from the Eurotechnical Research University in Hawaii. Her work is currently funded by the National Institutes of Child Health and Development. Exercise, healthy hearts and healthy brains: LSI researchers document a vital connection David Johnson  Jeffrey Burns New NIH grant boosts effortsA new clinical trial is now underway that will study what forms of aerobic exercise are best for seniors, how much exercise is most helpful and whether there is a point of diminishing returns when exercising. This research recently got a major boost from the National Institutes of Health, which awarded Burns a $780,000 grant to study the effect of different doses of exercise on the brain in healthy adults over the age of 65. “Our prior studies suggest that maintaining fitness through exercise may slow changes in brain structure associated with Alzheimer's disease,” Burns said. “This study takes these important observations to the next level by rigorously testing how and why exercise impacts the brain and by defining the optimal amount of exercise for maximizing brain benefits.” Johnson said that the research represents the most vigorous investigation of the relationship between physical and mental abilities in seniors to date. “These projects work because they are multidisciplinary. Jeff Burn's expertise in the clinical evaluation of dementia, Joe Donnelly's expertise in how to measure physical fitness and my expertise in memory and cognition have combined to make a really interesting and important investigation.” Donnelly connects physical activity and academic performance Joseph E. Donnelly Joseph E. Donnelly, director of LSI's Center for Physical Activity and Weight Management, a national go-to expert in the scientific understanding of obesity and accompanying metabolic syndrome, found an additional benefit in his latest clinical trial of promoting physical activity in elementary school children: improved academic scores. Donnelly and colleagues found “significant improvements in academic achievement” for the composite, reading, math, and spelling, scores in children whose schools participated in Physical Activity Across the Curriculum (PAAC) during the three-year project. Led by their teachers, children in 24 Kansas elementary school students jumped, twirled, leapt and leap-frogged during classroom lessons. For example, when students solved for X in Algebra Aerobics, they answered in squats. Those schools whose students exercised at least 75 minutes or more a week also showed less increase in Body Mass Index (BMI) over the three-year project than those children whose schools had 75 or fewer minutes a week of physical activity during class lessons. More children in PAAC shifted from being at risk or overweight downward to healthier BMIs. The children at PAAC schools also increased their daily physical activity outside of PAAC—even through the weekend—and appear to be continuing to do so. However, the effect on academic scores is perhaps the most intriguing outcome of the study, say Donnelly and colleagues in Preventive Medicine, Volume 49, Issue 4, October 2009: “Our results are from a longitudinal, randomized, controlled trial and compared [physical activity] PA (not fitness) to academic achievement. These important findings require confirmation as they may have a profound impact on school administrators and teachers and their perception of PA in the classroom. The positive influence of PAAC on academic achievement may influence whether such a program will be received favorably and supported school-wide given the current climate centered on academic performance generated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.” Obstacles to exercise are greater for people with disabilities Katherine Froelich-Grobe More than half of all Americans are not active enough to get the health benefits of exercise and for people with disabilities, the rates of inactivity are significantly higher. Katherine Froelich-Grobe, associate research professor of gerontology, is heading up an LSI project that is studying the effectiveness of two different types of behavioral interventions to encourage people with mobility impairments to adapt and maintain physical activity. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the project is showing that people in wheelchairs face the same obstacles to getting regular exercise that the general population does – lack of time, lack of motivation – but other barriers are disability-specific. Adaptive home exercise equipment is costly, physicians and other health care providers don't know what to recommend, and wheelchair users often lack social networks with other wheelchair users to learn what works and what doesn't. The project hopes to recruit as many as 180 participants by the end of June 2010. So far Froelich-Grobe is encouraged. “Our program has stepped in to really provide information and support to promote the adoption of exercise,” she said. “The Surgeon General recommends 150 minutes of exercise a week. The good news is that our participants are adopting the exercise. What we're looking at in the future is how we can help people who have even more challenges and barriers, to help them make progress in their health behavior change.”
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