James Sears, Staff Writer
A new study at Kennesaw State University helps to more accurately determine a size for preterm infants and also help students gain experience in medical research.
The study, “BMI Curves for Preterm Infants,” was conducted by Dr. Irene E. Olsen, Dr. M. Louise Lawson, Dr. A. Nicole Ferguson, Dr. Shannon C. Grabich and Rebecca Cantrell, a student in the MS Applied Statistics program, and was published in the magazine Pediatrics in March.
The study helps students gain experience in medical research by letting them help with the study. Olson, who headed the project, said the growth curves can be used to assign BMI to preterm infants, that is, infants born more than three weeks before the expected birth, and help improve growth.
“The intent is that these growth curves will be used for preterm infants and term infants to assign BMI at birth and then to track changes over time for preterm infants while they’re in the hospital,” Olsen said.
Olsen said infants are currently looked at based on weight and length for age and are compared based on the same age and gender. The new curves will allow the assessment of infants based on his or her length.
“Right now we look at weight for age, length for age and head circumference for age,” Olsen said. “We compare the size of an infant to other infants of the same age and the same gender. This new set of curves allows us to also evaluate an infant’s size compared to its specific length.”
In a study summary sent to KSU, Olson wrote that preterm infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) experience slow growth with weight and length. Olsen wrote that slow growth can affect neurodevelopment and without the proper way to evaluate growth, poor growth could be missed.
“Poor growth may go unrecognized without the tools to evaluate it,” Olsen wrote. “This is a problem because once identified, growth often can be improved with close attention and changes in the infant’s diet.”
Olsen said tracking BMI in preterm infants could help access health risks.
“Given the fact that BMI is such an important clinical parameter in children and adults, we think that it will likely be an important parameter for accessing risk of health outcomes in preterm infants as well,” Olsen said.
Olsen said research for this is ongoing.
Besides the BMI growth curve’s potential for health assessment in infants, Ferguson said the study has created opportunities for students to gain experience in medical research.
“The project that we completed with the BMI growth curves is spring-boarding other opportunities for ongoing student research at Kennesaw State,” said Ferguson.
Students work on the project to acquire real-world experience.
“We had a class of 11 students in the fall who got to work on this project with real data and real questions from actual doctors and are still working,” Lawson said.
Lawson’s student, senior psychology major Kélanie Hédou, talked about her experience with working on the BMI growth curves project.
“Being in Dr. Lawson’s class when this opportunity came along was like academic Christmas,” Hédou said. “Dr. Olsen’s [BMI curves are] how we created the percentiles that we based a lot of our research on.”
Grabich, who studied BMI growth curves and was taught by Lawson, said all students should participate in directed studies.
“I would advise all students, undergraduate and graduate alike, to participate in directed studies and research assistantships to receive guidance and mentoring to find rewarding careers,” Grabich said.
