Most Recent CIFASD Publications
CIFASD
- A global multicohort study to map subcortical brain development and cognition in infancy and early childhoodThe human brain grows quickly during infancy and early childhood, but factors influencing brain maturation in this period remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we harmonized data from eight diverse cohorts, creating one of the largest pediatric neuroimaging datasets to date focused on birth to 6 years of age. We mapped the developmental trajectory […]Ann M Alex
- Maternal circulating miRNAs contribute to negative pregnancy outcomes by altering placental transcriptome and fetal vascular dynamicsCirculating miRNAs the in blood are promising biomarkers for predicting pregnancy complications and adverse birth outcomes. Previous work identified 11 gestationally elevated maternal circulating miRNAs (HEamiRNAs) that predicted infant growth deficits following prenatal alcohol exposure and regulated epithelial-mesenchymal transition in the placenta. Here we show that a single intravascular administration of pooled murine-conserved HEamiRNAs to […]Marisa R Pinson
- Prenatal alcohol exposure and cognition at midlife: Evidence of fluid cognition deficits in two cohortsCONCLUSION: While all participants with PAE had lower fluid cognition, those with PAE and dysmorphic features also exhibited specific deficits in their performance on measures of inhibition, attention, and cognitive flexibility. Thus, PAE is associated with ongoing cognitive deficits in middle adulthood, which can be observed most clearly among individuals with dysmorphic features.Z R Shapiro
- Predicting Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Using Machine Learning Techniques: Multisite Retrospective Cohort StudyCONCLUSIONS: Machine learning algorithms were able to identify FAS risk with a prediction performance higher than that of previous models among pregnant drinkers. For small training sets, which are common with FAS, boosting mechanisms like CatBoost may help alleviate certain problems associated with data imbalances and difficulties in optimization or generalization.Sarah Soyeon Oh
- Mutation in the Bone Morphogenetic Protein signaling pathway sensitize zebrafish and humans to ethanol-induced jaw malformationsFetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) describe ethanol-induced developmental defects including craniofacial malformations. While ethanol-sensitive genetic mutations contribute to facial malformations, the impacted cellular mechanisms remain unknown. Bmp signaling is a key regulator of epithelial morphogenesis driving facial development, providing a possible ethanol-sensitive mechanism. We found that zebrafish mutants for Bmp signaling components are ethanol-sensitive and […]John R Klem
- Results of a screening tool for fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are associated with neuropsychological and behavioral measuresCONCLUSION: Results from the FASD-Tree screening tool were associated with neuropsychological and behavioral measures. Participants classified as FASD-Positive were more likely to have impairment in all domains tested. The results support the effectiveness of the FASD-Tree as a screening tool for use in clinical settings, providing an efficient and accurate way to identify patients in […]Matthew T Hyland
- Anatomy-Aware Contrastive Representation Learning for Fetal UltrasoundSelf-supervised contrastive representation learning offers the advantage of learning meaningful visual representations from unlabeled medical datasets for transfer learning. However, applying current contrastive learning approaches to medical data without considering its domain-specific anatomical characteristics may lead to visual representations that are inconsistent in appearance and semantics. In this paper, we propose to improve visual representations […]Zeyu Fu
- Atypical developmental trajectories of white matter microstructure in prenatal alcohol exposure: Preliminary evidence from neurite orientation dispersion and density imagingINTRODUCTION: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), a life-long condition resulting from prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), is associated with structural brain anomalies and neurobehavioral differences. Evidence from longitudinal neuroimaging suggest trajectories of white matter microstructure maturation are atypical in PAE. We aimed to further characterize longitudinal trajectories of developmental white matter microstructure change in children and […]Blake A Gimbel
- Delayed cortical thinning in children and adolescents with prenatal alcohol exposureCONCLUSIONS: Regional differences were seen longitudinally in the trajectory and timing of CT change in children with PAE, suggesting delayed cortical maturation and an atypical pattern of development compared with typically developing individuals. In addition, exploratory correlation analyses of SPC and EF performance suggest the presence of atypical brain-behavior relationships in PAE. The findings highlight […]Blake A Gimbel
- Racial/Ethnic Disparity in Association Between Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Alcohol Intake During Pregnancy: Multisite Retrospective Cohort StudyCONCLUSIONS: The risk of delivering a baby with FAS was comparable among White, Black, and AI/AN women at similar levels of drinking during pregnancy. Regardless of race, a 1-gram increase in AAC resulted in increased odds of giving birth to a baby with facial anomalies or deficient brain growth.Sarah Soyeon Oh