Awards

The project intends to identify challenges to accelerate linear growth among infants/children in low-income settings and strategies to overcome them. The study proposes delivery of an integrated package of interventions (nutritional, environmental, WASH and care) during pregnancy and early childhood in a community-based model. Using stratified randomization, the proposal has been designed in a manner that permits the assessment of the impact of these intervention packages when delivered synergistically or independently on the growth and development of the young child.

The project study proposes the development of nutrient rich genotypes in rice possessing the key nutraceuticals and therapeutic clues through which required nutrients such as iron and zinc for pregnant women and infants of rural households will be supplemented sustainably. Any improved line of rice will be compared with the traditional parents and other popularly eaten white rice varieties for its nutritional content and therapeutic values. The improved lines of rice having nutritive, anti-diabetic and therapeutic characters may be registered.

The study intends to develop an inter-generational intervention to ameliorate neonatal gut microbiota. It is based on the hypothesis that consuming prebiotic starches such as high amylose maize starch (HAMS) by mothers during the third trimester of pregnancy will modify their fecal microbiota and will subsequently lead to a beneficial variation in the fecal microbiota of the newborn infant. This will consequently guide favorable intestinal activity, thus enhancing growth, and intellectual competence of the infant in the intermediate and long term.

The study is aimed at developing a novel, low-cost test for pre-term birth (PTB). The proposal is intended to test and validate the low-cost salivary progesterone as a point-of-care (POC) test for detecting risk of PTBs in rural community settings of India. Offering non-invasive sampling of biological fluid that is easy to collect, the study allows validation of saliva from a large cohort of pregnant women residing in low-resource community settings. It is planned to obtain single saliva sample from each participant and determine its predictive characteristics against gestation at delivery and other obstetrics and neonatal outcomes.

Louis Roux from LifeAssay Diagnostics (Pty) Ltd. in South Africa, in collaboration with PATH, will develop an easy-to-use, low-cost, strip test for pregnant women in developing countries to detect the onset of proteinuria, which indicates a highly increased risk of preeclampsia/eclampsia. Preeclampsia/eclampsia is a major cause of maternal death, particularly in developing countries. Onset is rapid, and so early diagnosis is crucial, particularly in remote communities where health care is not immediately available. The test measures the ratio of protein to creatinine, which is more accurate than the current protein-only version, and they will produce a low-cost version that can be locally manufactured. They will evaluate the test's performance in comparison to three similar tools on a minimum of 1100 urine samples collected from the CAP trial in South Africa. The study also includes usability and stability evaluations to inform further prototype improvements and product insert development for downstream validation studies.