Department Overview

Pediatric Neurology

Faculty:

Peter Heydemann, MD: Section Head

Joshua Baron, MD

Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, MD, PhD

The Division of Pediatric Neurology is centered in the Department of Pediatrics; there are four pediatric neurology attendings and the section works closely with the Department of Neurological Sciences. The main focus of the adult neurology resident experience in Pediatric Neurology is clinical care of general child neurology patients. Resident education is primarily focused on patient-based learning from inpatient and outpatient consultations in the Rush Children's Hospital (housed within the main Rush Hospital facility), Stroger Hospital of Cook County and the Rush Professional Building.

The most common inpatient consultations involve seizure management and assessment of "spells," perinatal encephalopathies, hydrocephalus, and neurologic questions in psychiatric patients. Many of the inpatient consultations arise from the active pediatric and neonatal intensive care units at Rush Children's Hospital. Outpatient pediatric neurology clinics are held nearly every day and involve a broad variety of problems including epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, developmental delay, autistic spectrum disorders, headaches, tic disorders, and neurogenetic diseases. Out-patient training in neurobehavioral care is available at our north shore office.

Specialty programs based at Rush include the Muscular Dystrophy program, which meets 3 times per month and is the largest in the Chicago area, and the Fragile X program which is the largest in the Midwest and is the base for an active basic science and clinical research program.

Joshua Baron, MD, joined the Rush Pediatric Neurology division in July 2006. He received his undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Bowdoin College in 1995 before pursuing a year of research at Johns Hopkins Hospital, examining various mechanical and neural aspects of obstructive sleep apnea. He then attended the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he received his medical degree in 2000. Dr. Baron then pursued general pediatric training at Case Western Reserve University/ Rainbow Babies' and Children's Hospital before beginning his pediatric neurology training at Tufts-New England Medical Center/ Floating Hospital for Children, completed in 2005. From 2005-2006, he served as an epilepsy and electroencephalography fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Baron has a particular focus in epilepsy, particularly in neonatal epilepsy and the interactions between sleep and epilepsy. He has ongoing trials in examining sleep symptoms in children with epilepsy, as well as studies to evaluate novel pharmaceuticals.

Elizabeth Berry-Kravis MD, PhD, is a professor of pediatrics, neurology, and biochemistry at Rush University Medical Center. She received a Bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame in 1979, a PhD in biochemistry in 1983 and MD in 1985 from the University of Chicago. She completed a pediatrics residency in 1987 and pediatric neurology fellowship in 1990, also at the University of Chicago, and moved to Rush University Medical Center in 1992.

Dr. Berry-Kravis established the comprehensive Fragile X Clinic and Research Program at Rush in 1992, through which she provides care and support to over 400 patients with fragile X syndrome for management of neurological, medical, and behavioral and genetic issues. Her clinical research projects involve studies of epilepsy and psychopharmacology in fragile X, clinical trials of new promising medications in FXS and development of outcome measures and biomarkers for such trials in the FXS population. She is also involved in research to characterize neurological problems in fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS) and relate clinical and radiological findings to molecular measures in fragile X carriers. Her laboratory research involves studies of effects of fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) on signal transduction mechanisms in neural cells as well as molecular studies aimed at identifying genetic risks and genotype-phenotype relationships in neurological disorders, including Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease, vascular dementia, congenital central hypoventilation syndrome and SIDS.

At Rush and other Chicago Institutions, Dr. Berry-Kravis lectures in Biochemistry, Pathology, Genetics, Neurobiology and Genetic Counseling courses. She co-directs the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at RUSH, which runs molecular tests for diagnosis of numerous genetic conditions including fragile X syndrome. She is on the Advisory Board for both the FRAXA Research Foundation and the National Fragile X Foundation and received the Jarrett Cole Award for clinical work with individuals with fragile X in 2002 and The Hagerman Award for FXTAS research in 2004. Because of the substantial overlap between characteristics of fragile X syndrome and other developmental disorders such as autism, Dr. Berry-Kravis has been heavily involved in work with individuals with a variety of developmental and neurogenetic disorders. She has worked as an advisor to several special education co-ops and has served on the Easter Seals advisory board in Chicago.