Written by: Dr. Vilte Barakauskas

P2RISM Study

Pregnancy and Pediatric Reference Intervals for Safe Medicine

Co-Principal Investigators: Dr. Kate Chipperfield and Dr. Vilte Barakauskas

Lab physicians, Drs. Vilte Barakauskas and Kate Chipperfield, at BC Children's and Women's Hospital, alongside patient co-leads are spearheading the P2RISM study (Pregnancy and Pediatric Reference Intervals for Safe Medicine) to help improve care for pregnant women and newborns. Healthcare relies heavily on the lab and reference intervals (RIs) to guide test interpretation and patient management, but did you ever wonder how we know what is normal or abnormal? RIs should represent the intended population and method of testing. However, current RIs for pregnant women and neonates are poorly characterized owing to their quickly changing physiology and difficulty in obtaining blood samples from babies.

This study aims to recruit healthy pregnant women and newborns to donate blood samples at 24 hours after delivery (while in hospital with routine tests). These blood samples will be used to calculate normal ranges for several routine blood tests for postpartum mothers and newborns in order to create RIs that clinicians and patients can be confident in. If you, or someone you know is interested in participating, fill out the expression of interest survey and a research team member will be in touch with you as soon as possible. More information and contact info can be found at: http://www.bcchr.ca/prism