ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

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...

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...

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...

To read the full abstract: Front. Endocrinol. 2020; 11:106. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2020.00106• 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 e...

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 > ...

Horm Behav. 2020;126:104849. 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104849. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0018506X20301756?via%3DihubIn brief: This study used functional MRI to compare resting state functional connectivity in women who started oral contraception during puberty or ad...

TOPMed Anthropometry Working Group; NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Consortium et al. Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.Nat Genet. 2022 Mar;54(3):263-273.Abstract: https://pubmed-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.proxy.kib.ki.se/35256806/In brief: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on unrelated individuals rely...

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...

Medicine (Baltimore). 2020 Sep 25;99(39):e22389. doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000022389. PMID: 32991460.In this relatively small study (6 placenta) the placentas from mothers of infants born large for gestational age (LGA) were compared to placentas of appropriate gestational age (AGA) infants for changes in genome wide DNA methylation. There were significant differences in the specific meth...

PLoS One. 2022 Feb 18;17(2):e0258054. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0258054. PMID: 35180212.Brief Summary: This mouse model of diabetes describes how early administration of sodium glucose transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors can protect pancreatic beta-cells from glucotoxicity damage. Early use of SGLT2 inhibitors can revert/prevent beta-cell failure in mice with diabetes due to KATP channel de...