The funding was announced as part of the Early Researcher Awards program, which will see a total of $8.68 million awarded to support institutions across Ontario. Prominent young researchers will use the money to recruit students, research fellows, technicians and assistants to build outstanding research teams and gain a solid competitive edge for Ontario and Canada.

The four researchers from uOttawa:

Maxim V. Berezovski
Research project: Discovery of functional aptamers targeting cells receptors
Professor Maxim Berezovski of the Faculty of Science is developing technology to be used to recognize cancer cells, track their position and eliminate them without harming normal cells. This work will significantly improve diagnosis and treatment in cancer patients.

Elizabeth Fitzpatrick
Research project: Beyond Screening: Towards understanding the effects of mild bilateral and unilateral hearing loss on children in the early school years
Hearing loss in infancy and early childhood can lead to problems at school. Faculty of Health Sciences professor Elizabeth Fitzpatrick is evaluating the effectiveness of early identification in children affected with mild forms of hearing loss. Her work will help to develop better programs for these children.

Tracey Lynn O’Sullivan
Research project: Mapping organizational assets to enhance disaster resilience: A salutogenic approach to business continuity planning
The tsunami in Japan and the Slave Lake fire in Alberta are recent reminders of the importance of planning for, responding to and recovering from major emergencies. Professor Tracey O’Sullivan from the Faculty of Health Sciences is looking at ways the public and private sectors can work together to improve disaster planning.

Risa Donn Sargent
Research project: Adaptation in invasive species management
Harmful invasive species—non-native plants, animals and other organisms that can hurt the economy, environment or health—are a growing problem. Dealing with them could cost governments billions of dollars a year. Faculty of Science professor Risa Sargent is exploring the feasibility and long-term impacts of using biocontrol, or “natural enemy” solutions, to combat this growing problem.

The two researchers from uOttawa affiliates:

Dr. Rebecca Craufurd Auer
Research project: A translational approach to targeting natural killer cells in the perioperative period with innovative cancer therapies
More than 30,000 Ontarians undergo cancer surgery each year, but, in many cases, the cancer returns. At the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Dr. Rebecca Auer hopes to prevent this by developing new cancer treatments that stimulate the immune system around the time of surgery.

Dr. Darryl Davis
Research project: Next generation cardiac stem cell therapies for congestive heart failure
At the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, Dr. Darryl Davis is exploring new ways to treat heart failure using a patient’s own heart stem cells. His work could lead to a life-saving therapy for the more than 500,000 Canadians living with congestive heart failure—and strengthen the reputation Ontario and Canada hold as a leader in cardiac research and care.

The University of Ottawa is committed to research excellence and encourages an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation, which attracts the best academic talent from across Canada and around the world. It is an important stakeholder in the National Capital Region’s economic development.

“Proteins are the building blocks of life,” explains Dr. Lee. “By discovering fermentation, Pasteur introduced the concept of ‘life without oxygen.’ What remained a mystery until now is how our cells make these building blocks in low-oxygen conditions in order to sustain life. This finding constitutes a significant missing piece of the puzzle and highlights how there are still many basic processes of life that remain undiscovered.”

Dr. Lee’s breakthrough has opened up possibilities in biomedical research for an array of oxygen-related conditions including gestation, stroke and heart disease. In addition, Dr. Lee’s team has already observed that cancer cells hijack this newly discovered process to form life-threatening tumors. The team is currently working on developing novel drugs that will be able to cure cancer by blocking this process.

About the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine is nationally recognized as a leader in medical research. Through their intense research activities, the Faculty of Medicine and affiliated research institute partners have contributed significantly to the following uOttawa milestones: the second-highest growth rate in overall Tri-Council Funding (all programs) since 2003, second in Canada by MacLean’s magazine for medical science grants and the third-highest growth rate in Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funding for universities with medical schools since 2003.

“This certainly is a well deserved international recognition of your outstanding scholarly contributions in such a highly competitive field” wrote Professor Emil Petriu, Director of the School of EECS.

Professor Boukerche is a Full Professor and Canada Research Chair in Large-Scale Distributed Interactive Simulations and Mobile Computing and Networking. In 2010, Azzedine Boukerche was inducted into the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Last year, Professor Boukerche and the Diva Network were awarded $8 million for developing next generation intelligent vehicular networks and applications.

The IEEE Computer Society is the world’s leading organization of computing professionals. Founded in 1946, and the largest of the 38 societies of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Computer Society is dedicated to advancing the theory and application of computer and information-processing technology, and is known globally for its computing standards activities.

MDI²is working on 24 innovative medical device technologies. Projects such as the patent-pending, Portable DNA Extraction Device, a microchip that can identify a person’s DNA from a single fingerprint in less than 15 seconds and the Electronic Nose Device (Enose) that will provide non-invasive diagnoses of diseases like heart failure through breath and saliva tests using custom algorithms.

Combining his scientific, management and business expertise, Dr. Mussivand, director of the Cardiovascular Devices Division of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and uOttawa professor (Faculties of Medicine and Engineering), is determined to turn the powerful tide of Canada’s current dependence on imported medical devices. “Medical devices are essential in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases and help provide quality health care to Canadians,” says Dr. Mussivand. MDI² offers a number of inter-connected medical device-related programs to its students and fellows in the hopes of building the next generation of Canadian medical device professionals. The programs are grouped into four key focus areas: training and research; technology commercialization; service activities and sector awareness; and consulting.

“Having the opportunity to work on important medical device projects such as the Portable DNA Sequencing Device that can both contribute to the advancement of science and engineering and to the enhanced understanding of the human body is what led me to work with Prof. Mussivand,“ says Leah Labib, a biomedical engineering student who’s completing her master’s at MDI².

The wide-ranging collaborations of MDI² with over 55 partners in an extensive research network of hospitals, universities, industry partners, government agencies and other related organizations in Ottawa, across Canada and around the world have placed Dr. Mussivand and MDI²at the forefront of these significant advances in the medical device sector.

For more insight into Professor Mussivand’s research read the article “Leading Canada towards breakthroughs in the medical device sector” in the June 2011 issue of Research Perspectives.

About the University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is committed to research excellence and encourages an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation, which attracts the best academic talent from across Canada and around the world. It is an important stakeholder in the National Capital Region’s economic development.

“Obesity can become part of an intergenerational cycle,” said Dr. Kristi Adamo, co-author of this report and co-founder of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity (HALO) Research Group at the CHEO Research Institute. “Birth weight averages can be an indicator of the weight a child will carry through preschool and even into adulthood. It’s critical for a mother to understand that her healthy eating and lifestyle decisions during pregnancy will impact much more than a nine-month gestation period.”

To investigate this issue in more detail, Dr. Adamo and her colleagues examined data from more than 4,000 mother and baby pairs cared for at The Ottawa Hospital and the Kingston General Hospital between 2002 and 2009. They found that excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) can be just as problematic as pre-pregnancy overweight and obesity. In fact, the study indicated that independent of pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), mothers who exceeded GWG recommendations specific to their pre-pregnancy BMI significantly increased the likelihood that their child would be born larger than average for gestational age (i.e. above the 90th percentile of infant weight for gestational age.)

“It doesn’t matter if you’re categorized as normal weight, overweight or obese during pre-pregnancy — exceeding the 2009 Institute of Medicine GWG targets seems to have a growth promoting effect on the fetus,” explained the co-author Zach Ferraro, a PhD student in Dr. Adamo’s lab and in the Human Kinetics doctoral program at the University of Ottawa. He is co-supervised by Dr. Denis Prud’homme, co-author of this report and dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences. “Unfortunately, delivering a large baby increases the risk for many delivery-related complications in both mom and baby. But the takeaway here is that GWG is a modifiable risk factor that can and must be addressed during prenatal visits for all women!”

The data for this study was obtained from the Ottawa and Kingston (OaK) Birth Cohort, developed by Drs. Mark Walker, Shi Wu Wen and Marc Rodger of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and the University of Ottawa. The study was funded by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Ontario Women’s Health Council, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

About the CHEO Research Institute
Established in 1984, the CHEO Research Institute coordinates the research activities of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and is one of the institutes associated with the University of Ottawa teaching hospitals. The Research Institute brings together health professionals from within CHEO to share their efforts in solving pediatric health problems. It also promotes collaborative research outside the hospital with partners from the immediate community, industry and the international scientific world. For more information, please visit www.cheori.org.

About the University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is committed to research excellence and encourages an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation, which attracts the best academic talent from across Canada and around the world. It is an important stakeholder in the National Capital Region’s economic development.

eButterfly allows anyone to help keep track of Canada’s amazing diversity of butterflies. Citizen scientists can record, map, track and share their butterfly observations. They can even upload digital photos of butterflies, keep life lists of species and build dynamic maps of where and when butterflies are found.

“This is a magnificent tool for naturalists,” says Doug Hyde, executive director for NatureServe Canada. “And the technology for recording butterfly sightings can be readily adapted for any plant or animal group to eventually build vast, citizen-driven databases for the biodiversity Canadians have inherited.”

This flexibility is built into eButterfly technology and represents a major step in making Canada a world leader in natural-history monitoring and conservation. eButterfly will engage Canadians in measuring the impact of climate change and habitat loss on butterflies.

“The need to discover how butterflies will respond to rapid climate change and the impact of development in wilderness areas motivated our decision to construct eButterfly,” says Professor Jeremy Kerr, who leads the Canadian Facility for Ecoinformatics Research based at the University of Ottawa in the Department of Biology. “eButterfly mobilizes Canada’s best asset – its citizens – to give biodiversity research a shot in the arm. Butterflies are like canaries in a coal mine, our early warning device for how other species might respond to climate and habitat changes.”

“eButterfly will make it even more rewarding to join the grassroots community of citizens who love to understand Canada or who care about how it is changing. Butterfly watchers have never had these capabilities before now,” says Peter Hall, co-author of Butterflies of Canada. “I am particularly pleased that Canada’s top butterfly experts and organizations are solidly behind eButterfly.”

About eButterfly
eButterfly was developed by Max Larrivée as part of the Canada Global Change Research Transect, a project funded through and Early Researcher Award to Professor Jeremy T. Kerr in Biology at the University of Ottawa.". The project was also funded by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation. NatureServe Canada provided additional support and expertise, as did Agriculture Agri-Food Canada. eButterfly is now live at www.ebutterfly.ca.

For more information about the study, read the news release by the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO).

Such facilities could improve the health of drug users and reduce harm among them, and could also reduce public drug use, according to research led by Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi of St. Michael’s Hospital and Dr. Carol Strike of the University of Toronto.

Dr. Lynne Leonard of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa collaborated closely as a Co-Investigator on the research, having received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR) to undertake an earlier feasibility study for a supervised injection facility in Ottawa. Dr. Leonard is an assistant professor, Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine and Director of the HIV and Hepatitis C Prevention Research Team in the Faculty of Medicine and is also a Career Scientist with the Ontario HIV Treatment Network.

After four years of independent research, the researchers recommend the creation of three supervised injection facilities in Toronto and two in Ottawa.

“Using multiple sources of data, we projected that supervised injection facilities would prevent HIV and hepatitis C infections and result in meaningful health benefits for people who use drugs in Toronto and Ottawa,” Dr. Strike said.

“Our analyses also suggest that three supervised injection sites in Toronto and two in Ottawa are likely to represent good investments of health care dollars,” said Dr. Bayoumi.

The researchers stressed that it is up to the communities in both Ottawa and Toronto to decide if, when and how to proceed with their recommendations. They were not asked to recommend specific locations and have not done so.

However, if Toronto and Ottawa act, the researchers recommend multiple sites, not a central location like Insite in Vancouver. Drug use is dispersed in Ontario’s two largest cities, unlike in Vancouver, where it is concentrated in the Downtown Eastside. In addition, people who use drugs indicated that they did not want a single facility, which could become a focus of opposition. Community members consulted by the researchers also preferred multiple locations spread out across each city, to minimize the possible impact on local neighbourhoods.

The researchers note there has been a reduction in needle-sharing, drug overdoses and public drug injections since Insite opened in Vancouver in 2003. More than 90 supervised injection sites exist in Europe and Australia.

Their report is believed to be the broadest study of its kind. It was funded by the Ontario HIV Treatment Network and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The research addresses the Toronto Drug Strategy, passed by Toronto City Council in 2005, which called for a needs assessment and feasibility study for supervised consumption sites. Dr. Bayoumi and Dr. Strike recommend only supervised injection sites, saying there is not enough evidence showing the value of supervised consumption sites, where users would also be able to smoke drugs.

A full copy of the report of the Toronto and Ottawa Supervised Consumption Assessment is available at www.toscastudy.ca.

About the University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is committed to research excellence and encourages an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation, which attracts the best academic talent from across Canada and around the world.

About the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine
The University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine is at the heart of one of the great biomedical research, education and clinical care networks in the world. With nine fully-affiliated hospitals and research institutes and 19 community-affiliated hospitals and clinical care sites, U of T Medicine is a research powerhouse that offers unparalleled opportunities for its 6,800 faculty and 7,000-plus students at all levels. Nearly half of Ontario’s medical doctors and fully 25 per cent of all health and biomedical PhDs in Canada were trained by U of T Medicine, which consistently ranks among the top medical schools worldwide.

As antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage continues to expand worldwide, the life expectancy of HIV-infected persons in developing countries will increase. Indeed, ART has reduced mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa, with 320,000 (or 20%) fewer people dying of HIV-related causes in 2009 than in 2004. So the challenge in coming years will be how to care for these individuals as they grow older.

The article, HIV and Ageing – Preparing for the Challenges Ahead, a joint effort by Edward Mills, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Health Sciences, Till Bärnighausen of the Harvard School of Public Health, and Joel Negin of the Sydney School of Public Health, emphasizes that, despite the current international focus on non-communicable illnesses like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, the commitment to treating older HIV patients with these conditions is limited. Effectively addressing the needs of ageing HIV-infected populations will require political intervention, stronger health systems, greater human resources and improved clinical infrastructure and expertise.

Professor Mills says, “The aging of the HIV epidemic in Africa and in many developing countries is one of the most challenging, yet unrecognized, public health issues affecting AIDS patients. HIV infection and HIV drugs increase a patient’s risk for developing cancer and cardiovascular disease. As such, we may save a patient from dying of an immune disorder, only to have them succumb to a common preventable disease that we had not planned for. Strategies that can help aging patients include common and inexpensive drugs, such as statins, blood-pressure medication and aspirin treatment.”

Recent modeling using South-African data suggests that HIV among people older than 50 will nearly double in the next 30 years, and the absolute number of similarly aged HIV-infected patients will triple in the same period. Designing programs for aging HIV-infected populations in developing countries will thus be a critical medical and public health challenge very soon.

Asthma is the most common chronic illness in children requiring a visit to Emergency. Every year, the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario sees more than 2,500 patients with asthma. Two thirds of these asthma patients present with more than mild symptoms, meaning they have respiratory distress requiring increased levels of care, which may include requiring overnight admission to the hospital.

Traditionally, for patients presenting with asthma arriving at the Emergency Department (ED), the triage nursing staff would administer a relief medicine in a puffer or mask, to open the airways and ease breathing. Now, there is one more treatment option available on arrival in Emergency for children with moderate to severe asthma. This option empowers nurses to administer an oral steroid treatment.

Oral steroids are routinely used in the treatment of moderate to severe asthma. “Before this Medical Directive for asthma treatment was initiated at CHEO, patients and their families would have to wait to see a physician before the oral steroid could be ordered and given,” said Debby Voskamp, nursing educator in CHEO’s Emergency Department. “Because it often takes a few hours to see improvement in patients who receive oral steroid medication, it made sense to give this treatment early in the Emergency visit. We are pleased to be part of putting this research into practice and making positive change happen.” The immediate impact on front line care has caught the eye of physicians, staff and hospital administrators alike.

CHEO’s Emergency department has 12 other Medical Directives in place now, but today’s announcement is the first relating to administering steroids to treat asthma. This Medical Directive clearly documents the type of care children with asthma should receive, depending on how they score on a standardized assessment to determine the severity of their asthma performed by triage nurses when they arrive at the hospital. The assessment evaluates multiple factors including muscle exertion, wheezing and oxygen saturation.

“A critical part of this research included getting unanimous support from Pharmacy, Respirology, nursing educators and all of the Emergency physicians before we could implement the Medical Directive,” said Dr. Roger Zemek. “We worked closely with the CHEO Medical Directive Committee and Medical Advisory Committee to prove that this Medical Directive is a safe, effective and appropriate intervention. We wanted to take asthma care to the next level, by offering rescue treatments over breathing treatments. Our strategy is something that other hospitals can model.”

The front line impact of this research put into practice is significant. A review of more than 600 patients’ medical records revealed that admission rates of patients with moderate to severe asthma dropped by one third, and patients who received oral steroids upon arrival at the emergency department tended to leave the hospital on average 45 minutes sooner. In fact, there was a direct correlation between how soon an oral steroid is administered and how soon patients gets better, as measured by their before and after scores on the standardized assessment.

This research was funded by the Ontario Academic Health Science Centre Innovation Fund.

About the CHEO Research Institute
Established in 1984, the CHEO Research Institute coordinates the research activities of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and is one of the institutes associated with the University of Ottawa Teaching Hospitals. The Research Institute brings together health professionals from within CHEO to share their efforts in solving pediatric health problems. It also promotes collaborative research outside the hospital with partners from the immediate community, industry and the international scientific world. For more information, please visit www.cheori.org.

About the University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is committed to research excellence and encourages an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation, which attracts the best academic talent from across Canada and around the world.

Under the leadership of Norm O’Reilly (professor of sport business in the Faculty of Health Sciences), Mike Kelly (Director of Sport Development at the Golf Association of Ontario) and Jeff Overholt (PGA of Canada member), the project is collecting data from selected PGA of Canada coaches and golf club operators to better understand the impact of a youth-based club system on long-term athlete development. The year-long research project will also use selected Junior Golf Development Centres (JGDC), which provide junior golfers between the ages of 6 – 18 with a developmental pathway and proper coaching support, as case studies to determine the economic impact and financial feasibility of JGDCs for golf facilities.

“Since Junior Golf Development Centres are in their infancy, we must still convince club owners and operators of the benefits and sustainability of a youth-based development system in golf,” explained Professor O’Reilly. “This study will help show club owners and operators that adopting the JGDC framework at their facility will improve the quality of their facility and improve their bottom line.”

The study will evaluate JGDCs’ ability to generate revenue in key areas such as tee time bookings and membership. Quantifying the economic benefits of JGDCs will help ensure facility fees paid to clubs are minimized and help create full-time coaching careers for PGA of Canada members. This in turn will improve the performance of Canadian golfers at the amateur and professional level. The research will also examine whether the emergence of JGDCs will increase the number of players in Canada.

“The goal is to identify a system which can provide support to players demonstrating a desire and high level of competency while fostering a life-long passion for golf,” says Mike Kelly, Director of Sport Development at the Golf Association of Ontario. “By bringing in the JGDC framework to golf clubs, we’ll be helping grow the sport at the grassroots level.”

Preliminary research results were presented at the 2012 Ontario Golf Coaches Summit on “Developing Junior Golfers through Coaching” from March 27-29 in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

“It can be traumatic for the child,” explains Dr. Colman. “When the primary caregiver experiences a bout of depression when the child is between two to five years of age, the child feels like he is experiencing a loss after having becoming attached to the mother during infancy. Mom isn’t there to help guide him through important stages of cognitive and social development, and this can have long-term consequences for his mental health.”

Dr. Colman’s article was published today on the Public Library of Science (PLoS) website. The study followed 937 Canadian children from birth to adolescence, and his research will help identify children at risk of developing depression during their teen years. This will enable front-line child and youth mental-health experts to help these children earlier, before depression truly manifests itself. Dr. Colman encourages mothers who are suffering from depression to seek help.

About the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine is nationally recognized as a leader in medical research. Through their intense research activities, the Faculty of Medicine and its affiliated research institute partners have contributed significantly to the following uOttawa milestones: second-highest growth rate in overall Tri-Council funding (all programs) since 2003; ranked second in Canada by MacLean’s magazine for medical science grants; and third-highest growth rate in Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funding since 2003 for universities with medical schools.

The study, conducted by the MONET group (Montreal-Ottawa CIHR Emerging Team) showed that non-obese women entering menopause with a healthy BMI made the menopausal transition without increasing cardiovascular disease risk factors often associated with menopause. This is a significant discovery given that cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the leading causes of death for women, and the risk factors associated with this disease drastically increase after menopause.

“It is well known that menopause transition is associated with weight gain, especially in the abdominal region, and with an increase in cardiovascular disease risk,” explains Dr. Denis Prud’homme, dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa, and principal investigator of the MONET group. “Our findings suggest that women who arrive at pre-menopause with a healthy body weight could go through the menopause transitions without increasing their risk of cardiovascular disease or diabetes, even if we have observed a significant change in body composition. One potential explanation could be that even if the area of visceral fat is increased, it is still under the critical threshold associated with cardio-metabolic deterioration.”

Over a period of five years, 102 healthy pre-menopausal female participants aged 47 to 55 were evaluated for body composition and cardio-metabolic changes. Researchers from the MONET group, including doctoral student Joseph Abdulnour and Professor Eric Doucet, both of the University of Ottawa’s School of Human Kinetics (Faculty of Health Sciences), each year monitored women’s weight, waist circumference, body composition (including fat mass, muscle mass and abdominal fat), fasting lipids, glucose and insulin levels, as well as resting blood pressure, in addition to other measurements. They discovered that despite changes in body-composition measurements and visceral abdominal fat in non-obese women, the changes were not accompanied by a cardio-metabolic decline.

Before enrolling in the program, participants were screened to ensure they were non-smokers, had a BMI between 20 and 29, were not involved in surgically induced menopause and reported overall weight stability for a six-month period.

“Our objective was to document the effect of menopause on healthy weight women through an observational and naturalistic study with no structured intervention,” explains Dr. Prud’homme. “That is, with no structured intervention to control or reduce the weight gain associated with menopause.”

The results reinforce the potential impact and benefits of maintaining healthy lifestyle habits and a healthy BMI for pre-menopausal women. The adoption of simple and proactive strategies like measuring body weight and waist circumference once a year during the menopause transition could be a practical way to prevent the increase of cardiovascular health risks linked to menopause.

The study was supported by a grant to the MONET group from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research awarded. With researchers from the Universities of Montreal and Sherbrooke, current research by the SOMET group (Sherbrooke-Ottawa-Montreal CIHR Emerging Team) focuses on lifestyle intervention studies to determine the potential for exercise programs and healthy diet to prevent excess weight gain in women during critical periods of their life, namely pregnancy and menopause transition, and in aging women.

For more information on this study and on the MONET-SOMET group, visit www.health.uOttawa.ca/somet.
 

The research was performed by Dr. Jane Yardley as part of her PhD studies at the University of Ottawa, under the supervision of Dr. Glen Kenny from the University of Ottawa and Dr. Ronald Sigal from the University of Calgary. Twelve physically active people with type 1 diabetes were recruited to look at how resistance exercise affects blood glucose levels when combined with aerobic exercise, and to determine if the order in which they’re performed makes a difference.

Although exercise has been shown to improve life expectancy and to decrease the risk of diabetic complications in people with type 1 diabetes, little research has been conducted to show what kind of exercise is the safest and most effective. Currently, many people with type 1 diabetes do not exercise, for fear of hypoglycemia (low blood glucose), a frequent occurrence during sustained aerobic activity.

Meanwhile, limited studies suggest that resistance exercise (weightlifting) or a combination of aerobic and resistance exercise may provide a greater benefit to blood glucose control than does aerobic exercise. The immediate effects of combined aerobic and resistance training on blood glucose, both during and after workouts, for those with type 1 diabetes are essentially unknown.

Dr. Yardley’s research sheds new light on this complex topic. Participants exercised for 90 minutes on two separate occasions: one where they ran for 45 minutes before lifting weights, and the other where they did the weightlifting first. Blood samples were taken throughout each exercise session to monitor glucose levels, and participants wore continuous-glucose-monitoring units to measure blood glucose for 24 hours after both workouts.

Researchers found that when aerobic exercise was performed first, blood glucose levels dropped right away and didn’t recover until the 90-minute exercise session was almost over. Nine out of the 12 participants needed to take in extra carbohydrate during exercise to prevent hypoglycemia. By contrast, when the exercise was performed in the opposite order (resistance first), blood glucose levels started to drop only after more than an hour into the workout, and fewer participants needed extra carbohydrate to finish the session. While overnight hypoglycemia was infrequent in the study, incidents tended to be worse after the sessions where aerobic exercise was performed first.

“Increases in sugar intake and decreases in insulin dosage that type 1 diabetes patients make to avoid hypoglycemia during exercise can essentially undo several of the benefits of exercise. This study shows that there are other options, which may in fact allow those with diabetes to gain more from their exercise activities while still staying safe,” says Dr. Yardley.

The researchers emphasize that more research on different exercise intensities and durations must be conducted before precise training regimens are prescribed. Dr. Yardley stresses that “…several physical, psychological and environmental factors can influence blood glucose levels during an exercise session in people with type 1 diabetes. As a result, it is crucial to consistently monitor blood glucose levels.”

Septic shock occurs when an infection spreads throughout the body and over-activates the immune system, resulting in severe organ damage and death in 30 to 40% of cases. The deadly condition accounts for 20% of all intensive care unit (ICU) admissions in Canada and costs $4 billion annually.

Under the leadership of Dr. Lauralyn McIntyre, who is a scientist at OHRI, an ICU physician at The Ottawa Hospital, an assistant professor of medicine at uOttawa and a new investigator with CIHR and Canadian Blood Services, this new Phase I trial will test the experimental therapy in as many as 15 patients with septic shock at The Ottawa Hospital’s ICU.

For more information about the trial, read the OHRI’s news release.

A federal investment of 124.5 million dollars, which includes 6,3 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, will be shared between 132 Canada Research Chairs across Canada, including five renewals at the University of Ottawa whose work is leading to ground-breaking discoveries in Parkinson's disease , computational nanophotonics, globalization and health equity, human genome epidemiology and proteomics and systems biology.

“The Government of Canada is committed to investing in research programs that continue to have a positive effect on Canada’s economy and that touch the lives of Canadians,” said Minister Goodyear. “Our government is staying focused on what matters – creating jobs and economic growth. By supporting innovation, we are not only encouraging cutting-edge research, but also helping bring promising ideas to the marketplace to keep our economy strong in the future.”

“We are grateful that the Government of Canada invests massively each year in this program, which plays a key role in both research and innovation and for training the next generation of scientists,” said Mona Nemer, uOttawa vice-president, research.

As one of Canada’s top ten research institutions, the University of Ottawa has gained significant momentum in the quality and quantity of research it carries out. Exemplary researchers who raise the bar in their fields—including Paul Corkum, who has helped position our institution among the very best photonics research centres in the world; Lori Beaman, a leading scholar in religious diversity and freedom; Tracy Vaillancourt, a renowned expert in children’s mental health and violence prevention; and Michael Geist, one of the leading copyright scholars in the world—are among the hundreds of specialists at the University of Ottawa whose scientific work benefits not only policy-makers, businesses, other researchers and practitioners, but also individual Canadians throughout the country.

Following the announcement will be a laboratory tour, photo opportunities and media availability.

WHAT: Announcement by the Honourable Gary Goodyear, Mniister of State for Science and Technology

WHEN: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 9 a.m.

WHERE: Atrium, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa (451 Smyth Road, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 8M5)

Please consult the Hôpital Montfort official press release for more information.

SMA is the leading inherited cause of death in infants and toddlers, affecting approximately 25,000 people in Canada and the United States. Scientists have known for many years that this disease is caused by inherited mutations in a gene called survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1). Most early attempts at developing treatments for SMA focused on replacing this gene, however, Dr. Kothary’s group has focused on understanding and targeting the physiological defects present in certain nerve cells with SMA. These cells have a weakened internal scaffold, which hinders their ability to connect with muscle cells and contributes to the severe muscle weakness associated with SMA.

Two years ago, Dr. Kothary and his team showed that a laboratory compound called Y-27632, which targets an enzyme that is involved in maintaining the cellular scaffold, could greatly increase lifespan in a certain mouse model of SMA. In this new study, they tested a compound called fasudil, which is similar to Y-27632, but has the advantage that it has already been approved for human clinical trials for other conditions, meaning that it could possibly be re-targeted to use in clinical trials for SMA more quickly than a completely new drug.

The Kothary group found that fasudil-treated SMA mice survived for an average of more than 300 days, compared to just 30.5 days for untreated SMA mice. However, the average lifespan of fasudil-treated SMA mice was still only about half as long as that of normal mice. Fasudil-treated SMA mice also had larger muscle fibres than the untreated SMA mice, and they behaved more normally with respect to grooming and other regular activities. However, they did not perform any better in strength and balance tests and they still had low numbers of motor neurons, which is typical for SMA.

“Our study is important because it expands a new area of research into SMA, which could lead to the development of new treatments,” said Melissa Bowerman. “Of course, this research is still at the early stages and although we found that fasudil could significantly increase lifespan in a mouse model of SMA, this drug couldn’t correct all the problems in these mice, and it had serious side effects when used at higher doses.”

“A number of groups are working to develop fasudil-like compounds with fewer side effects, and we’re very excited to see how these perform in our models, and hopefully in human SMA clinical trials some day,” said Dr. Kothary “However, we continue to believe that SMA is a disease that will best be addressed using multiple strategies together, including nutrition and possibly drug, cell and gene therapies.”

“Dr. Kothary’s group has been a pioneer in SMA research, both in characterizing the impact of SMA on tissues and organs, and in discovering a novel therapeutic pathway involving enzymes that target the cell scaffold,” said Dr. Alex MacKenzie, an expert in SMA at CHEO Research Institute and the University of Ottawa, who was not involved in the study. “It has to be said that this approach was not intuitively obvious and Dr. Kothary and his team are to be commended for their creativity in its discovery. It represents an important addition to the armamentarium of experimental SMA treatments.”

Although fasudil has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in certain adult human clinical trials, it is still considered experimental, and has not been approved for the treatment of any human condition in the United States or Canada. Individuals who are interested in experimental therapies should discuss this with their health care professional.

Dr. Kothary is a Senior Scientist at OHRI and a Professor in uOttawa’s Faculty of Medicine. He also holds the University Health Research Chair in Neuromuscular Disorders. Melissa Bowerman is a PhD student in Dr. Kothary’s group and is a recipient of a Frederick Banting and Charles Best Doctoral Research Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. This research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the U.S. Muscular Dystrophy Association. In addition, all research at OHRI is supported by The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.

About the University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is committed to research excellence and encourages an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation, which attracts the best academic talent from across Canada and around the world.

About the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) is the research arm of The Ottawa Hospital and is an affiliated institute of the University of Ottawa, closely associated with the University’s Faculties of Medicine and Health Sciences. The OHRI includes more than 1,500 scientists, clinical investigators, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff conducting research to improve the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human disease. www.ohri.ca.