ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

Brief summary: This longitudinal study aimed to determine if hyperinsulinemia and postprandial glucose levels could predict obesity progression in n=591 children and adolescents with obesity. The authors found no association between hyperinsulinemia, insulin secretion, low postprandial glucose levels, and an increase in obesity over a 2–4-year period.According to the carbohydrate-insulin model (1), diets with a high glycemic load (GL) promote weight...

To read the full abstract: Journal of Pediatrics 2018;192:105-114Rising degree of obesity has been shown to predict increased metabolic risk in obese children and adolescents (1). Nonetheless, it is unclear if BMI categories can be successfully applied to populations of obese children and adolescents for a risk-adapted stratification of therapeutic approaches, and here especially for the in...

To read the full abstract: N Engl J Med. 2020;382(6):525–533.In brief: High dose vitamin D supplementation of 4400 IU compared with 400 IU during the prenatal period alone to mothers of offspring at risk for asthma did not influence the incidence of asthma and recurrent wheeze in children aged 6-years.Commentary: Vitamin D deficiency has been im...

Brief summary: In 2021 and 2022, two important publications on pediatric thyroid carcinomas revealed a distinct molecular landscape compared to adult thyroid carcinomas (1,2). Pediatric differentiated thyroid carcinoma was mainly caused by fusion oncogenes, especially in children younger than 10 years (93%), compared to children aged 10–15 years (28%) and 15–20 years old patients (14%). In contrast, PTC due to BRAF mutations showed increasing frequency with age (7%, ...

To read the full abstract: Pediatr Diabetes. 2018;19:749–755.Disordered eating behaviors (DEBs) may lead to full blown eating disorders and these might impair patients’ adherence to chronic disease management. Both type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and celiac disease (CD) are associated with DEBs. Adolescents with T1D and eating disorders have worse metabolic control and a higher...

Brief summary: In this longitudinal study, blood glucose trajectories and their relationship with autoantibodies appearance were assessed in 1050 children with high genetic risk of type 1 diabetes (T1D) between 4 months and 3.6 years. Post-prandial blood glucose levels increased around 2 months prior to autoantibody seroconversion, with further increases thereafter, suggesting that islet autoimmunity co-occurs or follows insults on the β-cells.This ...

Brief Summary: This paper discusses the potential use of artificial intelligence (AI) in neonatology for clinical practice and research. The authors highlight the importance of multi-stakeholder involvement, and the need for well designed protocols to not only test outcomes but also to address the ethical issues involved and usability, bias, transparency and acceptability.We have been using AI since the 1950s when automated ECG interpretations became ava...

Nat Med. 2022;28(4):814-22. doi: 10.1038/s41591-022-01714-5.PubMed ID: 35314841Brief summary: This study performed large-scale metabolomic profiling across 14 000 adults from 4 cohorts and identified 17 steroid metabolites whose levels were reduced in individuals with prevalent asthma. The largest reductions were associated with inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) treatment, and these were valida...

To read the full abstract: PLoS Genet 2018;14:e1007698.These authors studied human placental and decidual tissues obtained from elective pregnancy terminations (6–12 weeks gestation). Placental extravillous trophoblasts (EVTs), the cells that rapidly invade the mother’s endometrium, undergo an initial stage of genomewide amplification leadi...

Brief Summary: This study investigated congenital hypothyroidism (CH) due to dominantly inherited resistance to TSH (RTSH) in 12 unrelated families. It reveals that mutations in a non-coding (TTTG) short tandem repeat (STR) on chromosome 15q cause this condition by activating a thyroid-specific enhancer cluster. Functional studies showed that activation of this enhancer cluster leads to upregulation of the bicistronic MIR7-2/MIR1179 locus, resulting in overexpression of its mi...