The doors seem to open to a new stage in the early detection of brain damage in children. The Hospital Clínic de Barcelona has developed a Novel technique to diagnose brain damage in babies.
Six out of every thousand children have mild brain damage and one in a thousand, serious. Many of them because of premature births or stunted growth during pregnancy. But these damages are not usually identified until at least two years of age, and sometimes until six or seven years, when they are already difficult to solve and lead to learning and behavior problems.
To get a diagnosis as soon as possible, a Clinic team has developed the first image biomarkers They detect abnormal brain development by studying brain connections in children one year of age. They allow to predict in 94 percent the results of neurodevelopment tests that are carried out in children under two years of age.
Thanks to this technique, at least one year (in some cases much more) the detection of brain damage will be advanced, gaining precious time, the first years of life, in which the brain is more plastic.
They have managed to take a brain picture that shows how the brain is developing and if there are neuronal alterations. For this they have adapted the MRI technique used in adults so that it can be used in babies and they have managed to obtain a photograph of the brain by zones, in addition to locating the neural connections between the different areas. Finally, they identified the anomalous connections by comparing them with those established in a healthy brain.
Undoubtedly, it is a pioneering research internationally that represents an important advance for the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders in children.
The next step is to further develop this Novel technique to diagnose brain damage in babies and perfect it for more accurate results in a shorter period of time, ideally as soon as the baby is born.
Via | The Reason Photo | abardwell on Flickr More information | Blog of the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona
