The Awards Committee of the Special Interest Group on Pain in Childhood (International Association for the Study of Pain) received seven outstanding nominations for the 2006 Young Investigator Award. The high quality of the candidates speaks well for the future of pediatric pain research around the world. After assessment of mentoring, previous awards, grants received, work to disseminate knowledge, impact of research on clinical practices around the world, letters of nomination, presentations, and publications, the committee chose Dr Anna Taddio as the awardee.

Anna Taddio completed her PhD in clinical pharmacology in 1997 at the University of Toronto. From 1998 to 2003 she worked as a Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Coordinator and Clinical Specialist/Team Leader in the NICU at the Hospital For Sick Children (HSC) in Toronto. In 2003 she was appointed Scientist at the HSC Research Institute.

Dr. Taddio’s program of research has two main thrusts: the clinical pharmacology of analgesics in infants and children, and the long-term consequences of neonatal pain. She has conducted studies of lidocaine-prilocaine (EMLA) cream that established its safety and efficacy for procedural pain in preterm infants, full-term infants and young infants. This work led to two first authored publications in the Lancet and one in the New England Journal of Medicine. Recently, Dr. Taddio published a study (JAMA, 2006) that evaluated the effectiveness of intravenous morphine and topical tetracaine when used alone, or in combination, for the management of pain in newborns undergoing central line placement using a randomized design. The results showed that morphine plus tetracaine is the most effective analgesic regimen, followed by morphine, then tetracaine. Dr. Taddio’s second line of research is on the long-term effects of neonatal pain. She performed the first prospective evaluation of the long-term effects of untreated surgical pain in full-term infants (Lancet, 1997). This study provided strong evidence indicating that newborn circumcision had persistent effects on infant behavior 4 to 6 months later and that adequate analgesia would attenuate this impact. More recently, she published the first prospective evaluation of classical conditioning and pain hypersensitivity in full-term infants (JAMA, 2002). In that study, she found that neonates as young as 24 hours old, who had been subjected to multiple painful procedures, learned to anticipate subsequent noxious events and responded to them with increased pain compared with non-injured controls of the same age. These data will have important implications in the management of neonatal pain. This paper was recognized by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Development as one of the ten best scientific papers published on early childhood development in 2002.

To date, Dr. Taddio has authored 55 papers which have received an impressive 892 citations (ISI Web of Science). Her 25 first authored publications have received the lion’s share (618 citations) attesting to her role as the driving force behind her high impact work. Her track record for publishing in the best journals (The Lancet, New Engl J Med and JAMA) is extraordinary.

Dr. Taddio has also authored 13 authoritative review chapters in highly recognized books, and is increasingly an invited speaker and symposium presenter at scientific meetings. She has received numerous research awards from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the premier Canadian national research grant council, including Principal Investigator awards, attesting to her independent investigator and senior status.

She has also had a significant impact on trainees. She is a sought-after mentor in pediatric pain research, and has already influenced the career paths of many students. In addition to serving as primary supervisor for 7 graduate students to date, she sits on a number of thesis committees and supervises research projects for other students.

Dr. Taddio has excelled at research. She has shown a talent for identifying important research questions which she has translated with great creativity into empirical and hypothesis-driven research of high quality. She imparts this enthusiasm to trainees, embodying the model of a clinician scientist, and we are pleased to present her with the 2006 Young Investigator Award.