ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

Brief summary: In this paper introduced a new energy trade-off score (ETOS) and index to characterize four extreme human body types regarding height and weight in young adulthood (e.g. tall-slender, short-stout, short-slender, tall-stout) for growth patterns and underlying genetic background. Growth data of 1889 subjects (996 girls) of the GrowUp 1974 Gothenburg study were investigated for the four body types showing that the two trade-off body types tall-slender<...

Brief summary: Growth data from three independent longitudinal cohort studies (Gothenburg GrowUp 1974 (n 1596); Gothenburg GrowUp 1990 (n 1890); Edinburgh Growth Study (n 145)) were used to train machine learning (ML) to predict adult height (AH) based on growth measurements until the age of 6 years. Five ML algorithms were tested. A random forest model predicted best, with sex and height at age 3.4–6.0 years being the most influencing factors. The model was cross-validat...

Brief summary: The authors assessed the relationship between markers of a stressful environment and final height in adult men and women in 71 countries (including 31 countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD]). They found that the more stressful the environment, the shorter the adult height. By order of decreasing importance, the relationship between markers of a stressful environment and height were income inequality > ...

Prof Hochberg was an exceptional paediatrician, endocrinologist and paediatric endocrinologist. He had an inquisitive mind, interest in various and wide fields, love for music, operas, books and people. Even in the field of endocrinology, he always researched beyond the visible. His groundbreaking contributions to the field of paediatric endocrinology have left an indelible mark on the medical community.Comment: To distinguish among chil...

Brief summary: This review uses an evolutionary approach to provide an interesting discussion on a proposed period of development called ‘emerging adulthood’. The authors explain that it can be seen not only as a sociological transition period but also as a biological life-history phase.The central theme of this review is ‘emerging adulthood’, which is the concept that an additional 4-6-year pre-adult period should be included in mode...

Brief summary: This prospective study, including 380 American girls followed from birth to age 15.5 years between 1991 and 2006, showed the predictive nature of age at onset of puberty for the subsequent progression and duration of pubertal maturation.Ze’ev Hochberg’s scientific and clinical curiosity is an inspiration for us all. Ze’ev approached the topic of puberty using evolutionary and developmental biology principles, according to wh...

Brief summary: In this cross-sectional study, the growth pattern from birth until diagnosis of premature adrenarche (PA) was assessed in 82 children (16 boys) compared to 63 controls (15 boys). PA children were taller, heavier and had an accelerated linear growth. PA children also showed earlier adiposity rebound (AR) irrespective of whether they had obesity or not. A sex dimorphism was observed. The authors hypothesized that both earlier AR and accelerated linear growth may t...

In Brief: This manuscript was prepared from presentations given at the ESPE New Inroads for Child Health (NICHe) conference held in May 2009 in Marstrand, Sweden. It reviewed the concept of plasticity in developmental programming and evidence for the role of epigenetic mechanisms. It became widely accepted as a leading reference on this topic with currently >750 citations in Google Scholar.Comment: Ze’ev Hochberg had a brilliant, creative mind. ...

In this review, Prof Zeev Hochberg presents the characteristics and the function of the juvenile stage of life of human beings from a broad evolutionary perspective.Homo sapiens is unique in having four postnatal pre-adult life stages: infancy, childhood, juvenility and adolescence. Unlike humans, all other mammals (including the great apes) transit directly from infancy to juvenility and then to adulthood, without the childhood and adolescence stages. T...

The adrenal cortex and medulla are intimately linked both anatomically and functionally in the adrenal gland (1, 2). Glucocorticoids are essential for the survival and maintenance of chromaffin cells, as well as the production of epinephrine (3, 4). At the transcriptional level, the expression of phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase (PNMT), the enzyme that converts norepinephrine to epinephrine, depends on glucocorticoids (5...

Ze’ev Hochberg was fascinated by growth, a dominant topic during his long-standing career. He published 153 articles on growth according to PubMed, the first 1980 [1] and the last in April this year [2]. Synergy between thyroid hormones and growth hormone was recognized decades ago [3] but Ze’ev Hochberg added an important piece of knowledge on the impact of hypothyroidism on the growth plate as well as the effects of thyroid hormones, growth hormone and the combinat...

Brief summary: this early experimental study analyzed the effects of radiation on growth hormone secretion and short-term cell survival in a cell culture model of dispersed rat anterior pituitary cells.At the time of this study, growth retardation had already been recognized as a significant adverse effect of brain irradiation in humans and experimental animals. Such growth retardation had been associated with impaired secretion of growth hormone in chil...