OTTAWA, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- In the developing countries, where access to ultrasound or other medical facilities is limited, doctors often don't know the gestational age of infants, potentially limiting the efficacy of healthcare they receive.
Scientists at the University of Ottawa and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario plan to test a method of measuring metabolic biomarkers in blood spots collected from the heel pricks during newborn screening, which has been shown to be accurate in a trial published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Preterm birth introduces a range of potential health risks for newborns and infants, some of which continue beyond the earliest stages of childhood. But in developing countries where healthcare can be less consistent and less available, combined with mothers sometimes being unsure of the date of conception, estimating the actual gestational age of a baby can be impossible.
If a calculator designed by the Canadian researchers is shown to be accurate in pilot tests in countries around the world, the scientists say it could vastly improve healthcare for newborns.
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"Knowing the gestational age of a newborn can guide assessments for that child and help determine the best post-natal care," Dr. Kumanan Wilson, chair of public health innovation at The Ottawa Hospital and a professor at the University of Ottawa, said in a press release.
For the study, the scientists conducted a study of all live births in Ontario, Canada, between April 2007 and March 2009, analyzing records on 249,700 infants who underwent newborn infant screening.
Using measurements of metabolites in their blood and physical characteristics data, including birth weight and sex, the scientists were able to accurately predict two-thirds of the children's gestational ages accurate to within 1 week of their age.
With the success of this first test of the aging model, the scientists are now planning to expand tests of the gestational calculator with heel prick samples from newborns in Bangladesh and Zambia, and also with newborn screening databases in China and the Philippines.
"I am very pleased to use newborn screening expertise in Ontario to help children in other countries, especially lower income countries," said Dr. Pranesh Chakraborty, a clinical investigator at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute and an associate professor at the University of Ottawa. "We are also excited about the potential to expand this approach beyond prematurity. This research will create the tools and methods to explore this for other important childhood health issues both in Canada and abroad."
