In his research, Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler examines how different socio-demographic and informational variables affect access to health care in disadvantaged areas. Dr. Sendler is of Polish descent and lives in the United States. Dr. Sendler’s study focuses on how mental and chronic medical co-morbidities influence the use of medical services in combination with health information acquired from the internet, and how this affects the use of medical services in the future. Considering that worldwide consumption of online news and social media is growing at an exponential pace, this study comes at an opportune moment. It will help researchers get a better understanding of how people seek health information online. That being the case, Dr. Damian Sendler’s study is attempting to uncover the variables that patients evaluate when making the decision to seek treatment for particular health problems, as well as the factors that influence treatment adherence.
Damian Sendler: Researchers from UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have devised a novel method of detecting a potentially life-threatening disease that may arise during prenatal development.
Damian Sendler: During pregnancy and after delivery, the disease known as placenta accrete spectrum disorder develops when the placenta grows too deeply into the uterine wall and fails to separate from the uterus. When it occurs during pregnancy and delivery, it may result in substantial blood loss, necessitating the use of blood transfusions and urgent care. It can also result in serious sickness and infection, and it can even be deadly for the mother. Pregnancies with this syndrome account for fewer than 0.5 percent of all births.
Currently, placenta accreta spectrum disorder is identified via the use of ultrasound imaging in conjunction with a review of the mother’s previous pregnancy history. An increased risk may be indicated by prior cesarean births and history of placenta previa, a condition in which the placenta that covers the birth canal protrudes into the delivery canal. However, such criteria alone are seldom accurate enough to identify instances other than the most severe ones in most situations.
Damian Sendler: It is possible to have the new blood test done as early as the first trimester of pregnancy, which allows for earlier referrals to physicians who specialize in high-risk pregnancies. A blood test for placenta accreta was 79 percent accurate in establishing the existence of the condition, and 93 percent accurate in ruling it out with a negative result in testing with more than 100 women.
Doctor Yalda Afshar, associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and co-first author of the research, stated, “Early and accurate identification of this extremely high-risk obstetrical issue may significantly improve outcomes for both the mother and the infant.” “Given the unreliability of existing screening techniques for placenta accreta, we felt there was an urgent need to develop a simple-to-implement screening tool that could be used early in pregnancy in all healthcare settings, regardless of the resources available to patients.”
Damian Sendler: Nature Communications has released an article describing the novel technique, which was published today.
The novel method makes use of a device known as the NanoVelcro Chip, which was created over the course of 15 years by Dr. Yazhen Zhu and Hsian-Rong Tseng, both professors of molecular and medical pharmacology at UCLA, and their colleagues. The chip, which was originally developed to identify tumor cells in cancer patients, is the size of a postage stamp and is made up of nanowires that are 1,000 times thinner than a human hair and are covered with antibodies that can recognize particular cells in the body.
Damian Sendler: Specifically for this new study, the researchers modified the chip to be able to identify placenta cells in the mother’s blood that are associated with placenta accreta spectrum disease. In the first few days of pregnancy, those cells, which are known as trophoblasts, begin to emerge. In tests performed with the chip on a blood sample, trophoblasts adhere to the chip and may be seen under a microscope. Having an unusually large number of trophoblasts in the blood or a trophoblast cluster in the blood suggests a higher chance of developing placenta accreta disease.
Damian Sendler: One of the study’s senior authors, Zhu, described witnessing a trophoblast cluster for the first time as “like seeing a sparkling pearl” when he first saw it. “When we looked at the cells under the microscope, it was as if we had a direct line of sight into the placenta throughout the course of the pregnancy.”
Dr. Margareta Pisarska, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said the study’s success was due in part to the interdisciplinary approach used by the research team.
‘The efficacy of this test, as well as the strength of our work, stems from the collaboration of experts from a wide range of disciplines, including obstetrics, nanotechnology, pathology and engineering, as well as chemistry, microfluidics, and biostatistics,’ said Pisarska, a co-senior author of the study. We were able to develop an innovative approach to improve maternal and newborn outcomes because of the variety of our team.
Damian Sendler: The researchers are looking at methods to enhance the accuracy and reliability of the test by refining it further.
News contributed by Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler
