ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

Brief Summary: This review evaluated the impact of gene mutations in the leptin-melanocortin pathway on short- and long-term outcomes after bariatric surgery, which is still the most effective treatment for severe obesity. This topic is of high clinical relevance, since such mutations play an important role in hunger regulation and energy homeostasis [1, 2] and may therefore confer weight regain after bariatric surgery [3]. To date there have been few publications, often with ...

To read the full abstract: NeuroImage 2017; 159: 236-247The results of this study suggest that, compared to adolescents with a low risk, lean adolescents with a high familial obesity risk show a weaker activation of neural systems subserving attentional self-regulation in response to food-denoting words. These same changes were found in overweight or obese adolescents. It is interestin...

Brief summary: The authors used data from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 to examine the incidence, disability adjusted life years and mortality of early onset type 2 diabetes T2D) in those 15–39 years of age. This showed that early onset T2D is a growing global health problem in adolescents and young adults, particularly in low-middle- and middle-income countries.Early onset of type 2 diabetes (T2D) is associated with longer lifetime exposure hyp...

Hum Mol Genet. 2020 Aug 3;29(13):2148–2161. doi: doi:10.1093/hmg/ddaa100. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32452519This study explores the hitherto unknown role of FGF9 in human testis development. The authors use two mouse models that phenocopy the skeletal defects of dominant FGF9 mutations that cause skelet...

Brief summary: This study evaluated the ability of genetic risk scores to predict severe obesity in adult survivors of childhood cancer. Data from 2548 survivors of European ancestry from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study was analyzed and findings were validated in 6064 survivors from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. Survivors with higher genetic risk scores had significantly higher odds of severe obesity. Adding genetic risk scores to prediction models that included canc...

J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2020 Dec 1;105(12):dgaa633. doi: 10.1210/clinem/dgaa633. PMID: 32898218.In this study, low risk pregnant women had an ‘early’ OGTT at 18-20 weeks of gestation and these results were correlated with the standard OGTT at 24-28 weeks. Pregnant women with Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) who had early OGTT still had a higher risk of delivering macrosomic in...

Nat Metab. 2021 Feb;3(2):228–243. doi: 10.1038/s42255-021-00346-2. PMID: 33619380.In brief: In this genome-wide association study, the authors were able to disentangle the mechanism that uncouples adiposity from its known cardiometabolic complications. They identified 62 genomic loci, at which the same allele is associated with both higher adiposity and lower cardiometabol...

Nat Commun. 2022 Feb 9;13(1):775. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28120-2. PMID: 35140214Brief Summary: This in vitro study identified interactions between distinct cell populations of the thyroid gland and immune cells in the context of Hashimoto thyroiditis. The authors provide important new insights into the pathological mechanism of Hashimoto thyroiditis by characterizing the stromal ...

Brief Summary: This study shows that obesity induces mitochondrial fragmentation and reduces oxidative capacity in white adipocytes through the activation of the small GTPase RalA. Targeted deletion of RalA in these cells prevents mitochondrial fragmentation, improves energy expenditure, and protects against obesity-induced metabolic dysfunctions, highlighting the critical role of RalA in obesity-related mitochondrial and metabolic abnormalities.Previous...