Respiratory study extended until March

MIRIAM HILL

Dr. Anna Banerji is determined to find out what’s making children on Baffin Island so susceptible to respiratory tract infections.

Last January, Banerji began a study of children under the age of five admitted to the Baffin Regional Hospital. Now, what was slated to be a one-year study has been extended until the end of March.

Banerji is trying to determine how cigarette smoke, overcrowded living conditions and other factors affect Baffin children and why they have one of the highest rates of lung infection in the world.

She has 122 cases on file of children from around the region admitted to the hospital with pneumonia or bronchiolitis. Bronchiolitis is an infection that occurs in young children, usually under the age of two, which causes respiratory difficulties. It is generally the reason many young Nunavummiut end up being medevaced to Iqaluit’s hospital.

Samples have been taken of nasal secretions from study participants from last year’s bronchiolitis season, which runs from February to May, but Banerji says it’s too early to talk about final results.

“I’m purposefully not analyzing them because I don’t want to bias myself or bias other people,” she said.

But there are some preliminary results.

Children from Igloolik, for example, are vastly over-represented in the study, with rates of infection almost five times that of other communities. It’s a phenomenon that isn’t new, Banerji said.

“Every year the really sick kids are in Igloolik,” she said. “Hopefully at the end of the study we might have some ideas or if not, it can be explored because we really need to help the community help the kids get better.”

Banerji worked as a pediatrician in Iqaluit in 1995. She was intrigued by the numbers of children on Baffin Island suffering from respiratory disease and received a grant to study the issue in 1997-98. The territorial government then decided to fund her research in hopes of discovering why these children are so sick.

“It was an observation I made many years ago in my work that concerned me that I’m just trying to understand,” she explained.

Banerji and a study nurse visited Pangnirtung and Pond Inlet last month to try and recruit healthy children as controls for the study. Until then, they had only 70 healthy children from Iqaluit to compare results with. Now there are an additional 32 from Pangnirtung and 25 from Pond Inlet participating in the study.

“The reason why you want healthy controls is when you’re trying to understand what makes children sick you have to ask, ‘What’s the difference between the children that are sick and the children that are healthy?’” she said. If there are certain differences between the groups then it’s easier to narrow down what exactly is causing disease.

Participants in the study are asked about five minutes worth of questions relating to the child’s environment, Banerji said, and healthy Iqaluit children are still being recruited to join the study. All study participants receive $50.

Once the study is complete, the specimens will be processed and the data will be analyzed over several months.

Banerji said her priority is to get the results and accompanying information to the communities as soon as possible.

She hopes to present her findings at the International Congress on Circumpolar Health this September in Greenland, and in Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami’s bilingual newsletter. She’s aiming to have a report ready for the GN by the end of the year.