A Wayne State University School of Medicine professor has been honored at home for her work abroad.
Sandra Jacobson, Ph.D., was selected by a committee of her Wayne State University colleagues as one of the 27th group of WSU Board of Governors Distinguished Faculty Fellows, an honor established by the board to recognize and assist the intellectual pursuits of selected senior faculty members.
Dr. Jacobson and her husband, Joseph Jacobson, Ph.D., also will receive the Henry Rosett Award from the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Study Group at the Research Society on Alcoholism's scientific meetings in June. The award is given annually to recognize researchers for outstanding long-term contributions in the field of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
The Jacobsons are professors in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences. They conducted a 19-year study of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders in a prospective longitudinal African-American cohort of 480 mothers and children in inner-city Detroit. Their current research focuses on the effects of very heavy prenatal alcohol exposure in the Cape Coloured community in Cape Town, South Africa, which is part of the Western Cape Province, a popular wine-growing region. In this region, workers were traditionally paid, in part, in wine, leading to a high incidence of alcoholism, including binge-drinking as many as eight to 10 drinks per occasion while pregnant, Dr. Jacobson said. According to a UNICEF report, as many as one in 10 children in the community have fetal alcohol syndrome, the highest incidence rate in the world. The research, conducted in collaboration with Chris Molteno, M.D., a developmental pediatrician, was the first prospective study of FAS beginning when mothers were recruited during pregnancy. Typical neurocognitive impairments of a child with FAS include low intelligence, behavior problems, poor social judgment and poor attention.
Dr. Sandra Jacobson received the WSU award at the Academic Recognition Ceremony held April 25 at WSU's McGregor Memorial Conference Center in Detroit. The award includes two $6,500 stipends given in 2013 and 2014 to support her research.
"I'm very proud of her," Dr. Joseph Jacobson said.
In addition to following up a longitudinal cohort of children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure using both neurobehavioral and neuroimaging assessments, the Jacobsons are collecting neuroimaging data from a new Cape Town sample of newborns born to heavy-drinking mothers and non-exposed controls, as part of R01 (5R01AA016781) and R21 (AA020037) grants from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The neuroimaging work also is being conducted with Ernesta Meintjes, Ph.D., a physicist at University of Cape Town, South Africa.
"We're conducting the first newborn neuroimaging study of infants with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure," Sandra Jacobson said. "We are also conducting an additional R21 study in which we give choline, a nutrient, to heavy-drinking mothers during pregnancy (R21AA020332); this work is being conducted with R. Colin Carter, a pediatrician at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. This grant did not include funding for neuroimaging. The WSU Distinguished Faculty Fellowship will enable me to cover the cost of scanning newborns who are participating in the choline trial to determine whether there are beneficial effects of choline on brain structural development. This part of the study would otherwise not be possible."
As part of the study, the researchers also will scan newborns in a comparison group whose mothers used methamphetamine during pregnancy.
"It is very important that these types of awards be granted to faculty members conducting research since it provides opportunities to pursue innovative approaches to problems, such as those in biomedical and public health areas that may have an impact on health issues both in the U.S. and internationally," she said.
Dr. Sandra Jacobson joined the WSU faculty in 1984, and said she is honored to receive her first Distinguished Faculty Fellowship award. The couple also has a child development research laboratory and hold honorary professorships at the University of Cape Town Faculty of Health Sciences.
Dr. Jacobson started her career at WSU by studying the impact of environmental contaminants, including PCBs in Michigan, and alcohol and substance abuse on infants and children.
"I would like to acknowledge the contributions of my husband, Joseph Jacobson, with whom I have collaborated on all of the behavioral teratology (the study of congenital abnormalities and birth defects) studies, as well as other researchers and our wonderful research staff, graduate students and fellows, both at WSU and at UCT. I also want to recognize the contributions of faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital and Children's Hospital of Boston, Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, Israel, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Delaware, with whom we are currently collaborating on our studies of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, as well as our other collaborators at Laval University in Quebec (Inuit PCB research) and those at Vanderbilt University, who helped us and our UCT collaborators set up the first functional magnetic resonance research in South Africa," she added.
Jointly, the couple will receive the Henry Rosett Award at the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Study Group's June 21 annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. This is the first time the award will be given to two individuals. It honors outstanding lifetime or long-term contributions to research in the field of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Honorees are nominated and chosen by committee.
The Jacobsons are members of the FASDSG group and have attended annual meetings for more than 20 years. Sandra Jacobson served as the study group's treasurer/secretary in 1998, vice president in 1999 and president in 2000.
At WSU, the Jacobsons have collaborated with Robert Sokol, M.D., the WSU distinguished professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the John M. Malone Jr., M.D., Endowed chair and director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development, on their longitudinal study in Detroit of children whose mothers abused alcohol, drugs and tobacco while pregnant. The Jacobsons followed the children through 19 years old.
They are now collaborating with Associate Professor Vaibhav Diwadkar, Ph.D., in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Noa Ofen, Ph.D.
"Drs. Diwadkar and Ofen are working with us and our graduate students from University of Cape Town as part of the functional magnetic resonance imaging research that we're conducting there," Dr. Jacobson said.