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Pirate puzzles and peekaboo: Beckett’s brachial plexus birth injury story

Posted on by | Patient Stories
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Beckett Stone-Lyman is an adorable, fun 2-year-old who loves to run, sprint, and climb. If he’s not charging around the playground, he’s probably doing a pirate puzzle. Or maybe he’s staring at his fingers as he wiggles them, amazed that his right hand can now do many of the same things as his left. Thanks ... Read More
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A fall from a swing uncovers a rare cervical spine condition: Charlotte’s story

Posted on by | Patient Stories
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If it were any other year, Charlotte Gillis would have celebrated her 10th birthday in mid-July with a big party. But in June 2024, a fall from a swing had left her temporarily paralyzed. Though her mobility returned within a few hours, she was still in a neck brace, still wobbly on her feet, and ... Read More
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Modeling urinary tract disorders on a chip: Zohreh Izadifar

Posted on by | Basic/Translational, Research
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When a new tissue sample arrives from the Department of Urology, the Boston Children’s Hospital lab of Zohreh Izadifar, PhD springs into action. The tissue, from a child with urinary tract pathology, is whisked into the tissue culture room. Under a hood, lab members Dasvit Shetty, PhD, and Gretchen Carpenter, MSc, carefully isolate the cells ... Read More
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A surprising link between Crohn’s disease and the Epstein-Barr virus

Posted on by | Clinical, Research
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Crohn’s disease, a debilitating inflammatory bowel disease, has many known contributing factors, including bacterial changes in the microbiome that foster an inflammatory environment. Now, for the first time, Crohn’s disease been tied to a virus — specifically, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), best known for causing infectious mononucleosis (mono). Researchers had already observed increased levels of EBV ... Read More
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Addressing food insecurity and nutrition challenges in pediatric type 1 diabetes care

Posted on by | Research
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Managing type 1 diabetes can be overwhelming for children and families. As children learn to live with the disease, many cut back on visits to their nutritionists. Others face barriers like food insecurity that make it difficult to maintain a balanced diet. And without the proper professional support and access to healthy foods, children’s overall ... Read More
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The surprising energy demands of marathon training

Posted on by | Health and Parenting
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Training for a marathon? Are you eating enough to help your body recover from one long training run and gear up for the next one? A surprising number of marathon runners don’t. In a study of athletes training for the Boston Marathon, more than two in five women and almost one in five men regularly ... Read More
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Could peripheral neuropathy be stopped before it starts?

Posted on by | Basic/Translational, Research
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An increase in high-fat, high-fructose foods in people’s diets has contributed to a dramatic increase in type 2 diabetes. This, in turn, has led to an increase in peripheral neuropathy — nerve damage, typically in the hands and feet — that causes weakness, loss of sensation and, in some, a stabbing, burning, or tingling pain. ... Read More
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Every heart has a story. See how we care for them all.

Posted on by | Patient Stories
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It’s easy to think of the heart as a common denominator — everyone has one — but no two hearts are alike. Every heart is different. Every heart has a story. For many children and adults, that story includes coming to Boston Children’s for specialized heart care. Some were born with complex congenital heart defects, while ... Read More
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It’s all in the PV loops: New analytical model could improve circulation assessments before heart surgery

Posted on by | Clinical, Research
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The double-switch operation corrects the congenital reversal of the heart’s ventricles and its two main arteries. It’s a practical way of putting the ventricles into the position they belong so that children with congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries (CC-TGA) can benefit from enhanced circulation. Surgery, though, doesn’t come without risks. Some children’s left ventricles — ... Read More
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Modifying macrophages in the lung could head off pulmonary hypertension

Posted on by | Basic/Translational, Research
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In the 1980s, when Stella Kourembanas, MD, began her career in neonatology, she cared for newborns with pulmonary hypertension, a disease that results in abnormally high blood pressure in the lung arteries and can lead to heart failure. Since then, treatments like inhaled nitric oxide, new vasodilators, new modalities of mechanical ventilation, and extracorporeal membrane ... Read More
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