Courtney Robertson
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Neuroscience
Up to one in five of the 500,000 US children who need intensive care each year end up with lasting neurologic disability. The risk is highest for children admitted with brain problems.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Pharmacology
- Topics
traumatic brain injury
pediatric intensive care
sedation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Test whether sedation-induced brain injury after traumatic brain injury depends on GABA receptors, the brain's main inhibitory receptors, by comparing midazolam with dexmedetomidine, a sedative without GABA activity, in a rodent model.
- Test whether sedative exposure after traumatic brain injury disrupts the development and repair of myelin, the insulation around nerve fibers, worsening white matter injury in the developing rodent brain.
- Test whether sedatives cause chronic overactivation of mTOR signaling, a growth-control pathway, that leads to worse neurologic outcomes after pediatric traumatic brain injury in rodents.
More about the research
The US Food and Drug Administration has warned that repeated or long exposure to anesthetic and sedative drugs early in life may harm brain development. Yet children in intensive care often receive sedatives for days or weeks, and most research has looked only at brief anesthesia during surgery. This project asks whether long sedation itself adds injury to a developing brain that has already been hurt, specifically after traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Why it matters
Children treated in pediatric intensive care units, especially those with traumatic brain injury, face a high risk of long-term neurologic disability. Identifying how common sedatives harm the injured developing brain could guide doctors toward safer sedative choices. It could also point to strategies that protect brain health in these children and, potentially, in adults with brain injury.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Li-Ru Zhao
Upstate Medical University, NY·Neuroscience
Determine how SCF+G-CSF given in the chronic phase of severe TBI enhances remyelination in cerebral white matter of young adult mice, using Cre-LoxP genetic tools and cellular and molecular analyses.
Robert Silbergleit
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether a treatment protocol guided by both intracranial pressure and brain tissue oxygen (PbtO2) monitoring improves 6-month recovery, measured by the Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended, compared with ICP monitoring alone in severe TBI.
Denise Hasson
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Characterize baseline nutritional status in 200 high-risk pediatric ICU patients using dietary questionnaires, malnutrition screening, arm circumference, skinfold thickness, grip strength and muscle ultrasound, and test whether these risk subtypes predict acute kidney injury.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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