I have always been interested in research, with my primary focus being endocrine disorders of children and adults. My early research centered on studies of thyroid pathologies in children, and I received recognition for this work as a recipient of the National Award at the VII Colombian Internal Medicine Congress, Barranquilla, in October 1984. Since then, I have continued to study diabetes, metabolic syndromes, and disorders of bone metabolism in adults. Over the past 20 years, I have participated as the Principal Investigator in approximately 80 international clinical trials and have been an author on more than 70 publications in important international medical journals, in addition to receiving four international research awards.
In 2016, my research focus expanded as I became very concerned about the impact of the Zika virus epidemic in Colombia. Despite not having previously been involved in this area of research, I wanted to make a scientific contribution to help the women and infants in my community. I was contacted by Dr Adre du Plessis, the Director of the Prenatal Pediatrics Institute at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, and by Dr Roberta DeBiasi, the Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Children’s National Hospital, and we began a wonderful research collaboration to study Zika virus in pregnancy. We enrolled 80 pregnant women and provided prenatal imaging to evaluate for Zika-related brain changes. After the birth of the infants, we performed neuroimaging. We expanded the research to follow infant and child neurological development to school age. In these studies, we collaborated with Sarah Mulkey, Dorothy Bulas, Margarita Arroyave-Wessel, Colleen Peyton, Madison Berl, Michael Msall, Elizabeth Corn, Meagan Williams, Emily Ansusinha, and many other investigators. My research team has been trained in techniques to evaluate infant and child neurodevelopment. We are now in our seventh year of follow-up with seven publications in international journals and presentations at international meetings.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution