Pitt Pediatrics congratulates Silva Arslanian, MD, Richard L. Day Professor of Pediatrics and Clinical and Translational Science and scientific director of the Center for Pediatric Research in Obesity and Metabolism (CPROM), on her receipt of a multi-PI NIH grant aiming to study brain health in youth at risk for type 2 diabetes.
Arslanian will lead a team of researchers at Pitt Pediatrics and UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh focusing on metabolism, obesity, and diabetes components. A second team of researchers led by Tamara Hershey, PhD, James S. McDonnell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychiatry & Radiology, and director of the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine, will lead the neuroscience component.
The group will work to determine if obesity, insulin resistance and beta cell dysfunction with or without dysglycemia are associated with altered brain structure (MRI) and function (cognitive tests) and they will follow changes over time to determine predictors of change in brain outcomes among youth with obesity, prediabetes and type 2 diabetes compared with normal weight youth.
Photo credit: UPMC Creative Services