Anesthesia Department receives NIH grant to study delirium and cognitive decline in older cardiac surgical patients

The Dept. of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine has received a major new grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “Proteomic Signatures of Delirium and Long-Term Cognitive Decline in Older Cardiac Surgical Patients.” This 5-year, 7-million-dollar grant, with Dr. Bala Subramaniam as Principal Investigator, is a collaboration with the Systems Biology Lab at BIDMC. Delirium is a frequent complication following heart surgery in older adults and leads to long-term complications, including Alzheimer’s disease. The team will identify delirium biomarkers by using banked plasma specimens from the ongoing PANDORA trial. They will use proteomics, a technique measuring levels of 11000 proteins in blood, to develop a panel of proteins that predict the risk of developing delirium and 12-month cognitive decline and then validate them in the Pandora cohorts. Then they will decipher the mechanisms by which intravenous acetaminophen is effective in preventing postoperative delirium, and identify commonalities and differences between cardiac and non-cardiac surgical delirium mechanisms.