Institutional Career Development Core

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

The INvestigation of Co-occurring conditions across the Lifespan to Understand Down syndrome (INCLUDE) supplement will support a promising early career investigator, Hannah Rea, to broaden her research and related clinical experience in behavioral and cognitive disorders co-occurring with Down syndrome. Among the most common, quality-of-life impairing, and understudied behavioral phenotypes associated with Down syndrome are challenging behaviors, such as aggression or noncompliance. Challenging behaviors have negative long-term consequences for individuals with Down syndrome and their families, including contributing to decreased acquisition of skills that are critical for global functioning and independence. The proposed project aims to identify and analyze the interacting effects of risk factors for challenging behaviors in children with Down syndrome, which will inform interventions. This project will investigate nonverbal and verbal IQ as predictors of severity of challenging behaviors, moderated by executive functioning in 120 children with Down syndrome ages 6 to 14 years. The feasibility and acceptability of measures will be assessed with 10 families of children with Down syndrome and 5 adults with Down syndrome and latent modeling and multi-modal measures will be used to operationalize EF and challenging behaviors. The same models will be investigated in an archival sample of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a disorder that overlaps in commonly co-occurring conditions and occurs in heightened prevalence in children with Down syndrome. The archival sample includes children with a known genetic etiology associated with ASD with (n=125) or without (n=87) intellectual disability, and with a DYRK1A mutation, a candidate gene for Down syndrome (n=27), ages 3 to 24 years. The comparison to ASD will inform whether existing evidence-based interventions for children with ASD may be adapted for children with Down syndrome. Dr. Rea will join the Institute of Translational Health Sciences (based at the University of Washington) as a KL2 scholar and receive mentorship from a highly qualified team of senior investigators at the University of Washington, Seattle Children’s Hospital, and the University of California, Davis MIND Institute. Through the KL2 program, Dr. Rea will gain knowledge and skills in translational science through interactive didactic sessions with the multidisciplinary KL2 cohort. Additionally, Dr. Rea will seek intensive training in research with children with Down syndrome and their families, electrophysiology methods with children, and advanced statistical training in structural equation modeling. The proposed mechanism will support her progression towards establishing her own laboratory and applying for independent research funding to support a future clinical trial investigating the trajectory of and interventions for challenging behaviors in children with Down syndrome.