ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

Preface

In analogy to previous years, in this year’s chapter we can present only ~1% of the acquired publications according to our search criteria in Pubmed. The last year has again been extremely exciting for the field of obesity and weight regulation and it was a significant step into the future in terms of scientific output. Of course, one of the well-known phenomena of the past year has been a marked increase in child and adolescent body weights and the prevalence of obesity, as well as changes in lifestyle behaviors, during the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown (1, 2, 3). On the other side, it has been observed that the BMI or body fat mass of patients contributes significantly to the severity of the course of COVID-19 disease. In this context, new findings on the pathophysiological basis of this observation have been published (see paper XX).

The Yearbook 2021 chapter on obesity and weight regulation comprises further exciting articles covering a broad research area. Particular mention should be made of the new insights into the structure and function of the satiety receptor, MC4R, the high prevalence of functionally relevant variants, and the possible effective pharmacological therapy for affected patients.

References:

1. Kim FS, Kwon Y, Choe YH, Kim MJ. COVID-19-related school closing aggravate obesity and glucose intolerance in pediatric patients with obesity. Sci Rep. 2021 Mar 9;11(1):5494. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-84766-w.   2. Stavridou A, Kapsali E, Panagouli E, Thirios A, Polychronis K, Bacopoulou F, Psaltopoulou T, Tsolia M, Sergentanis TN, Tsitsika A. Obesity in Children and Adolescents during COVID-19 Pandemic. Children (Basel) 2021 Feb 12;8(2):135. doi: 10.3390/children8020135.   3. Pietrobelli A, Pecoraro L, Ferruzzi A, Heo M, Faith M, Zoller T, Antoniazzi F, Piacentini G, Fearnbach SN, Heymsfield SB. Effects of COVID-19 Lockdown on Lifestyle Behaviors in Children with Obesity Living in Verona, Italy: A Longitudinal Study. Obesity (Silver Spring) 2020 Aug;28(8):1382–1385.