Diagnosing sick babies shouldn?t be guesswork.
A $110,000 grant to the University of Maryland Medical Center by the R Baby Foundation of New Jersey will help develop rapid DNA-testing technology to accurately and immediately diagnose children too young to speak for themselves.
To this purpose, the university unveiled the Rebecca Rabinowitz Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory Friday.
“We?re going to identify diseases, not by growing the organism the old-fashioned way. We?re going to identify them through identifying their DNA,” said Dr. James Nataro, head of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children and a professor of pediatrics. “By the end of 2008, we?re going to do this.”
A machine already exists that can analyze a blood sample against a database of recorded matches to identify the suspect DNA, he said. And technology exists to identify numerous diseases and program their codes into this device. “The lion?s share of the effort is going to be doing the clinical studies to validate the tests.”
Parents at the Hospital for Children will be asked for permission to take an extra blood sample for the machine, while traditional blood cultures are performed for actual diagnosis. “We?re going to take technology that?s been available in bits and pieces and put it all into one place, then we?re going to work very hard to come up with a way we can rapidly diagnose diseases,” hospital director Dr. Steven Czinn said.
This potentially life-saving gift comes from a loss of the founders, the Belsky and Rabinowitz families of Baltimore and New Jersey. Henry Belsky, a Pikesville lawyer, said the death of his 9-day-old granddaughter Rebecca Ava Rabinowitz inspired their families.
“When we buried Rebecca, the immediate family that were there made a commitment that although Rebecca was short-lived, she would be long remembered,” he said. “Every time a baby?s life is saved, it?s like saving the world.”
Her parents, Andrew and Phyllis Rabinowitz of New Jersey, created the foundation to support research as well as education for both doctors and parents about newborn health.
“It?s been a really good distraction. It?s kept me busy,” she said about the foundation work. Still, “it doesn?t stop the pain of losing her.”
