ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

To read the full abstract: N Engl J Med 2018;379:428–439In this multi-centre cohort of 156 patients with hypotonic polyuria, direct measurement of hypertonic saline-stimulated plasma copeptin had much greater diagnostic accuracy than a standard water-deprivation test, as judged by the final reference diagnosis, which was determined on the basis of medical history, test result...

To read the full abstract: N Engl J Med 2019;380:33–44This paper describes a large randomized, placebo-controlled trial of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) 2000 IU per day in 25,871 US adults. After median follow-up of 5.3 years, supplementation with vitamin D did not alter the risk of the primary end points, invasive cancer of any type hazard ratio, 0.96; 95% confidence interval [CI], ...

To read the full abstract: JAMA Network Open 2018;1:e185275The authors describe a small case series of four patients, age range 18–28 years, with Prader-Willi syndrome and obesity. All had received childhood growth hormone therapy, two had previous bariatric surgery, and all had psychiatric comorbidities before the current intervention. All received deep brain stimulation, via elect...

To read the full abstract: JAMA Pediatr 2019;173:160–168This paper describes a large population-based cohort of women in New Zealand who received metformin (n=1996 women) or insulin (n=1932) for treatment of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). There were no differences between the two groups in any measure of offspring childhood hei...

To read the full abstract: PLoS Med, 2019;16:e1002744These investigators painstakingly collated individual-level data from 37 pregnancy and birth cohort studies from Europe, North America, and Australia, comprising 162,129 mothers and their children, in order to identify the optimal levels gestational weight gain in relation to risk of offspring obes...

To read the full abstract: PLoS Med 2018;15:e1002681.These authors highlight a novel pregnancy risk factor, ‘late-pregnancy dysglycaemia’ in women who are obese but had normal glucose tolerance when they were tested for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) earlier in pregnancy. In a prospective cohort study of obese women without GDM (n<...

To read the full abstract: JAMA Pediatr 2018;172:e180739.This randomised controlled trial of 1303 exclusively breastfed 3-month-old UK infants was primarily performed to test the impact of early introduction of solid foods, from age 3 months, on the risk of food allergies (1). Sleep was measured as a secondary trial outcome: the trial showed that early introduction of solids increa...

To read the full abstract: JAMA Pediatr 2018;172:1153–1160.This paper describes a gene-environment interaction twin study in 925 UK families (1850 twins). The heritability of childhood BMI was calculated by comparing the concordance in BMI at mean age 4.1 years between monozygous and dizygous twins; heritability was much higher among more obesogenic households (h2=8...

To read the full abstract: JAMA Pediatr 2018;172:1192–1195.The large prospective Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study included 3596 participants aged 3 to 18 years at baseline, and followed the large majority up to 20–30 years later. Comparing various measures of adiposity at baseline, Body Mass Index (BMI) outperformed the Triponderal Mass Index (TMI) and skinfold thicknes...

To read the full abstract: Nature Communications, 2019; 10 (1); 662This paper highlights the brain as a key target for growth hormone (GH) signaling affecting mostly energy conservation. To identify GH response neurons, C57BL/6 mice received intraperitoneal injection of saline or GH and their brains were processed to detect the phosphorylation of pSTAT5 as a marker of GH receptor a...

To read the full abstract: Cell. 2018 Oct 18;175(3):665–678.e23.This article reports a critical role for the vagal gut-to-brain axis in motivation and reward amongst the sensory cells of the right vagal nerve. Optogenetic stimulation of the mouse vagal gut-to-brain axis produced reward behaviors. Stimulation of gut-innervating vagal sensory neurons recapped the hallmark effects of s...

To read the full abstract: Cell Reports. 2018 Dec 4;25(10):2643–2652.e4.More on the gut and the reward response: Ghrelin has been reported to encourage eating through dopamine that is important for the reward response. Here, the authors injected 38 subjects with ghrelin, while exposing them to various odors, both food and non-food based. They were also shown r...

To read the full abstract: Nat Med. 2019 Mar;25(3):439–447.Prenatal screening for trisomy 21, trisomy 18, trisomy 13, and sex chromosome aneuploidies can be performed using next-generation sequencing of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in the maternal circulation. This article describes a new non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) approach for the detection of de novo or paternally inheri...

To read the full abstract: Nature Cell Biology 20,909–916 (2018)Produced by scattered Enteroendocrine cells (EECs)found along the length of the intestinal epithelium, gut hormones generate signals related to the rate of nutrient absorption, the composition of the luminal milieu and the integrity of the epithelial barrier. To study these rare cells, these authors combined the te...

To read the full abstract: Cell. 2018 Dec 13;175(7):1756–1768.e17.Irisin, a cytokine secreted by muscle during exercise, effects bone resorption and the differentiation of preadipocytes into thermogenic brown fat cells by displacing tethers between the cell and extracellular matrix molecules. Physical activity can reverse age-dependent decline in skeletal muscle, preventing osteopor...

To read the full abstract: Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. 476(11):2112–2122, 2018The century-long Fels Longitudinal Study of human growth and development aimed to track when growth plate fusion started and completed in children born as far back as 1915. Among 1292 children, each with between 1 to 30 serial left hand-wrist radiographs, children born in the 1990s reached ...

To read the full abstract: Pharm Res. 2018 Dec 5;36(1):21.Smectite purified from bentonite clay, and laponite SD-LAP, a synthetic Smectite were fed to rodents on a high-fat diet. Over a two-week period both the engineered clay and orlistat had weight loss effects.The unanticipated discovery that clay has a unique ability to “soak up” fat droplets in the g...

To read the full abstract: Endocrinology. 2018 Jul 1;159(7):2676–2682.The authors compared the effects of leptin versus weight loading using intraperitoneal weighted capsules (‘gravitostat stimulation’) on changes in fat mass in mice. Leptin infusion suppressed body weight and fat mass in lean but not in overweight or obese mice. Weight loading decreased body weight in ove...