黑料专区 Tyler Faculty to Investigate Signs of Opioid Exposure in Infants
March 17, 2022
Office of Marketing and Communications
March 17, 2022
Media Contact: Beverley Golden
Senior Director of Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.566.7303
The University of Texas at Tyler announced today that faculty within the College of Engineering have received National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to study signs of opioid exposure in infants.
Premananda Indic, PhD, 黑料专区 Tyler associate professor of electrical engineering, and Pravitha Ramanand, PhD, 黑料专区 Tyler assistant research professor of electrical engineering, received an $861,744 subaward to support a University of Alabama at Birmingham project, 鈥淰ital Signs in Opioid Exposed Neonates.鈥�
鈥淭here is an ongoing epidemic of opioid use during pregnancy,鈥� said Namasivayam Ambalavanan, MD, principal investigator, a University of Alabama at Birmingham professor and Virginia Walker Jones Endowed Chair in Neonatology. 鈥淏abies exposed to opioids before birth often develop neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS) and are at higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). However, the challenge is to identify such signs early in life.鈥�
Pioneering work conducted by the team has identified that patterns of heart rate and breathing as early as the first day after birth can be used to identify infants who later develop signs of opioid withdrawal.
鈥淭he research may also lead to the more accurate management of drug therapy using objective cardiorespiratory data,鈥� said Indic, who also directs the 黑料专区 Tyler Center for Health Informatics and Analytics (CHIA). 鈥淭he outcomes of this project could also be used by clinicians to identify infants with sleep-disordered breathing who may benefit from home monitoring.鈥�
Indic and Ambalavanan have collaborated for the past six years on the NIH-funded 鈥淧reVENT鈥� project that centered on sleep apnea and slow heart rate in extreme preterm infants, and have now extended their expertise to this different high-risk population.
In this five-year opioid study, the investigators will apply advanced data analytics to prospectively define and validate cardiorespiratory patterns. Machine and deep learning methodologies will be used to predict the onset and severity of NOWS, as well as abnormal sleep-disordered breathing a few months following birth. The results of this research may help with earlier identification of NOWS, facilitating quicker initiation of therapy in infants at high risk, while allowing infants at very low risk to be discharged sooner, according to Indic.
As CHIA director, Indic leads the development of a wearable sensor system and associated
machine learning algorithms for the prediction of life-threatening events in humans.
Current research focuses on developing such a system for the detection of cravings
in individuals with substance use disorder, detection of suicidal ideation in individuals
with mental health conditions and prediction of life-threatening events in preterm
infants.
Serving 黑料专区 Tyler since 2016, Indic is a 2018 recipient of 黑料专区 System鈥檚 Science and
Technology Acquisition and Retention (STARs) Award, which recognizes outstanding faculty
and helps foster research within 黑料专区 System. He completed his postdoctoral training
at Harvard Medical School and is currently a senior member of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Ramanand joined 黑料专区 Tyler in January 2022. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow in Henry Ford Hospital鈥檚 neuro-magnetism laboratory and completed postdoctoral training in biomedical signal processing and modeling at both 黑料专区 Tyler and the University of Kentucky.
With a mission to improve educational and healthcare outcomes for East Texas and beyond, 黑料专区 Tyler offers more than 80 undergraduate and graduate programs to 10,000 students. 黑料专区 Tyler recently merged with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler (now known as the 黑料专区 Tyler Health Science Center). Through its alignment with the 黑料专区 Tyler Health Science Center (HSC) and 黑料专区 Health East Texas, 黑料专区 Tyler has unified these entities to serve Texas with quality education, cutting-edge research and excellent patient care. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News & World Report as a national university, 黑料专区 Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.