Interdisciplinary team probes premature births

The population growth that's accompanied Alberta's economic boom has had an unanticipated impact on the province's neo-natal wards. As more babies are born in Alberta, the number of early deliveries has risen proportionately.

"We have in Alberta the highest preterm birthrate in Canada - it's over nine per cent - and this year in Edmonton alone we've increased the number of births by about 50 per cent over what it's been, so more babies are being born preterm," said David Olson of the University of Alberta's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.

Olson co-leads a research team that is one of four to be awarded the newly initiated Interdisciplinary Team Grant from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR). The Preterm Birth and Healthy Outcomes team, comprised of 20 researchers from 13 disciplines at seven institutions and organizations within and outside of the province, will receive $1 million dollars per year for five years.

"We have very good programs in the province to address (preterm births) already but with this new funding from AHFMR we're really able to do much more than we ever were before," Olson said. "We've been able to bring together the very best scientists from all three provincial universities and from other universities from Perth, Australia all the way to Toronto, Ontario. All these universities are working together to study Alberta women and Alberta babies, so we're going to do something about the problem here in Alberta."

Babies born before 37 weeks of pregnancy are considered preterm, a condition associated with developmental disorders, respiratory issues, learning difficulties and behavioural problems. Olson said the Preterm Birth and Healthy Outcomes team will focus on three objectives.

"First, we're going to be better at predicting which women are going to give birth early. Second, we're going to be better at intervening to prevent these preterm deliveries and prolong the pregnancy for healthier birth outcomes - we know we're not going to stop all preterm births - and third, we're going to be better at intervening with babies that have been born preterm so that they lead healthier lives."

Olson added that the Interdisciplinary Team Grant will contribute much more than its face value to his research team's efforts.

"There are many, many provincial organizations that have decided this is such an important project, they have to be part of our program," Olson said. "Indeed, the award from AHFMR has helped us to attract an additional $10 million from provincial agencies and other organizations to address this important problem."

Suzanne Tough, Olson's team co-leader from the University of Calgary's Department of Pediatrics and Community Health Sciences, said the array of possible reasons for Alberta's high rate of preterm births makes an interdisciplinary approach the best strategy for confronting the problem. Factors such as women waiting longer to have children, the role of treatments for infertility, lack of access to pre-natal care, economic and social pressures may act and interact to increase the possibility of preterm birth.

"You can imagine both ends of the spectrum," Tough said. "We have the affluent community of delayed child-bearers - they're well-educated, they're typically not smoking, they have healthy body-mass indexes, but they have these issues that lead to increases in preterm births - and then we have this other group of new Albertans who may be suffering more from economic insecurity and lack of stable housing, increasing stress, and then again increasing the probability of preterm birth. So that's what we hope to tease out through looking at the lifestyles, behaviours, stressors and biologic risks of different groups - it's not going to be one thing."

The other recipients of the AHFMR's Interdisciplinary Team Grant include a research team co-led by Catherine Field from the U of A's Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences that will investigate the impact of diet during pregnancy on maternal mental health and child development; a team led by Linda Pilarski from the U of A's Department of Oncology to develop a microfluidic platform - a "lab on a chip"- that can carry out many types of health and disease-related tests; and a team co-led by Lorne Babiuk, the U of A's Vice-President (Research), that will study how bacteria evolve within human populations, and design vaccines capable of providing protection against different strains and species.

"This program represents a bold new way of supporting research," said Jacques Magnan, interim president and CEO of AHFMR. "The varied disciplines of the investigators on these teams to address issues from all angles - the basic science behind the problem, the problem's effects across the population, all the way to real solutions to be used in the clinic and policy recommendations to be implemented by decision-makers."

The Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research currently provides funding to more than 600 researchers and researchers-in-training at the province's three main universities. AHFMR's commitment is to fund health research based on international standards of excellence and carried out by new and established investigators and researchers-in-training. Total AHFMR funding for more than a quarter of a century exceeds $950 million.