Aleem receives SPR Fellows’ Clinical Research Award

Congratulations to Samia Aleem, MD, who recently received a 2020 Fellows’ Clinical Research Award from the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR) for her abstract, entitled Assessing 3 Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia Definitions: Associations between Room Air Challenge Results and Respiratory Outcomes.

The Fellows' Clinical Research Awards are designed to encourage pediatricians in training to pursue careers in academic pediatrics. Winning candidates are selected based on the quality of the work (clinical or translational) presented in their abstract. Each award is given annually to one to three individuals.

Dr. Aleem, is a third-year Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellow at Duke University School of Medicine. She received her medical degree from Sindh Medical University, Pakistan. Subsequently, she came to the US and completed her residency training in Pediatrics at Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia. During her clinical fellowship, she is obtaining a Master's of Health Sciences in Clinical Research through Duke University School of Medicine, and is also completing a research fellowship at Duke Clinical Research Institute. Upon completion of her clinical fellowship, she will be joining the faculty in the Division of Neonatology at Duke.

Dr. Aleem’s primary research interest has been using large database analyses to improve outcomes of vulnerable infants. Her current abstract is a secondary database analysis performed in collaboration with the NICHD Neonatal Research Network, and provides valuable insight into the complex landscape of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) definitions. A recent NRN study has shown the highly predictive nature of a new definition, ‘pragmatic BPD’. The NRN has historically used the physiological definition of BPD, based on results of the room air challenge test to collect data. Dr. Aleem’s study showed that the room air challenge test is not predictive of long-term morbidities in extremely low birth weight infants. These findings are critically important for practicing neonatologists and support a shift in the currently used BPD definition, towards the more pragmatic definition for clinical trials and quality improvement benchmarking.

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