IISBR faculty affiliate Dr. Gerry Giesbrecht recently leveraged his in-depth expertise and research experience to obtain two major Canadian health grants, facilitating research on nutrition and fetal programming and infant sleep-training strategies.

The largest study utilizes previous salivary bioscience data and aims to, for the first time in humans, determine whether prenatal maternal choline and LCPUFAs moderate the effects of stress in pregnant women and their children by determining whether in utero cortisol exposures are reduced by increasing choline intake and LCPUFA status, and whether these nutrients also reduce the effects of prenatal stress on children’s HPA axis and neurocognitive ability. This research will contribute new insight regarding the role of nutrients as risk and resilience factors for children prenatally exposed to stress and guide intervention studies designed to reduce the impact of prenatal stress on child development.

A second, smaller study will be the first study to directly assess claims of long-term benefits and harms associated with the cry-it-out method. This research will have direct relevance to parents and parent educators and will provide critical evidence to help them determine the most appropriate strategies to dealing with infant sleep problems.

Congratulations Dr. Giesbrecht on this achievement!