Research Assessment #2

Name:

Meghan Reed

Date:

15 September 2017

MLA Citation:

Misrahi, Micheline. CCR5 Chemokine Receptor Variant in HIV-1 Mother-to-Child

Transmission and Disease Progression in Children. JAMA, American Medical

Association, 28 Jan. 1998, jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/187183#24637099.

Assessment:

I started to research disease progression in children because I am very interested in how

children respond differently to different diseases than young adults and fully grown individuals.

After reading many articles on the disease progression of children with kidney, heart, and brain

diseases, I decided to research Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) due to it's comparison to

adults. The article I found is about a research experiment detecting the effects of the CCR5

Chemokine Receptor Variant in children born with HIV-1 and the progression of the disease in

the children. The conclusion that was received in the experiment was that the children born with

the variant deletion were not significantly affected when it came to mother-to-child transmission

of HIV-1, however, the deletion did slow disease progression just as it does for adults.

This article shows one part of the field that really interests me, and that is genetics. I am

very interested in how genetics affect different age groups and how genetics will transfer from

generation to generation. This is shown through the part where the team conducting the
experiment sees if the absence of the gene variation would change the percentage of children that

had HIV-1 passed onto them. As well, it is shown through the disease progression of HIV-1 in

children and how it differs from adults. Although I am very interested in this topic, I am not sure

I would want to focus on this for my career due to the extensive amount of research compared to

hands-on experience with patients. Even though I recognize the importance of research for

medical fields, this article helped my ISM journey by reinforcing the idea that I want to be with

the patients rather than in a lab.

The article also shows a major aspect of pediatric doctors and surgeons, which is

experimental trials for new medicine and new experiments to find information. This is important

to the field because if no one were to study new things, nothing would get done and there would

be no advancements in the field. Even doctors that focus on patient care and a number of

surgeons have their own clinical trials to solve problems they believe to be very prevalent in the

field. I think that I would be interested in doing my own clinical trials while still being a general

pediatrician and surgeon because the idea of research interests me, though I do not wish to do

that with my life all day every day.

As I move on to the next research assessment, I hope to branch out to another aspect of

pediatrics that may interest me more than experimentation of disease progression. Next week, I

hope to find an article that focuses on either a general pediatric clinic or a pediatric intensive care

unit in order to narrow my topic of interest for ISM. Although I am not sure if I would like to

continue on the research path of pediatrics, I am grateful for the article and now knowing a more

direct path of where I may want to go with further assessments.