Monica Bianco, MD, Attending Physician, Endocrinology, at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, recently received a K23 award from the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The award in the amount of $944,519 will support her study Developing a Predictive Risk Score for Pre-Diabetes in Youth.
Youth onset type 2 diabetes is associated with rapid progression to diabetes-related complications suggesting a more aggressive disease process in children. The medications that are available to treat youth onset type 2 diabetes in children are limited, reducing the ability to improve health outcomes. The objective of Dr. Bianco’s study is to develop an early life prediction risk score for impaired glucose tolerance/youth onset type 2 diabetes to ultimately implement targeted interventions that will result in decreased morbidity and mortality from the disease.
Dr. Bianco is also an assistant professor of pediatrics (endocrinology) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Her mentors on this project are Jami L. Josefson, MD, at Lurie Children’s; William L. Lowe, Jr., MD, at Feinberg School of Medicine; Denise Scholtens, PhD, at Feinberg School of Medicine; and Marie-France Hivert, MD, at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Pediatric research at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute.
