Robert Bornschein , PhD
Principal Investigator, Cincinnati Clinical Center — University of Cincinnati
- Site
- Cincinnati
- Affiliation
- Department of Environmental Health, University of Cincinnati
- TLC era
- 1990s
- Tags
- Principal InvestigatorCincinnati Lead StudyDevelopmental ToxicologySteering Committee
Lead-exposure researcher in the Department of Environmental Health, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. With Paul B. Hammond, Bornschein co-directed the Cincinnati Lead Study (CLS) — a prospective birth cohort funded by NIEHS Program Project Grant PO1ES01566 that tracked prenatal and postnatal lead exposure and neurodevelopmental outcomes in inner-city Cincinnati children from the late 1970s through the 1990s.
The CLS produced landmark findings on lead's preferential effect on Performance IQ and visuospatial skills. Bornschein also co-authored foundational research with Amit Bhattacharya on postural-balance deficits in lead-exposed children — work that directly informed the TLC trial's postural-balance sub-study.
Cincinnati site Principal Investigator and TLC Steering / Publication Committee member. Listed in the TLC Trial Group appendix of the 2001 NEJM primary outcome paper.
His CLS infrastructure became the basis for TLC's Cincinnati clinical center, where Kim Dietrich served as site psychologist. Cincinnati had the most experienced environmental cleaning team across all four TLC sites.
The postural-balance sub-study (Bhattacharya 2007) was the only TLC secondary analysis showing a statistically significant positive effect of succimer — a finding limited to Cincinnati-enrolled children, raising questions about whether site-specific effects were obscured by the pooled intent-to-treat analysis.