ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

To read the full abstract: Science 2019;363(6424).A wide range of human diseases result from haploinsufficiency, where gene expression is decreased as compared to normal conditions. Haploinsufficiency is a typical mechanism in autosomal dominant disorders. Rare mutations in Sim1 or Mc4r are models of haploinsufficiency causing severe early-onset obesity with hyperphagia...

Pediatr Diabetes. 2018 May 15. doi: 10.1111/pedi.12691There is a small but significant debate as to whether or not type 1 (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) are the same disease with albeit different course. It might therefore be prudent to include into a chapter on T1D a publication on T2D. This study aimed to describe recent medication patterns and changes in medication patterns and glycemic con...

To read the full abstract: BMJ. 2018 Jan 10;360:j5644On the basis of scientific evidence and dietary recommendations, several diet quality scores have been developed to evaluate the healthfulness of dietary patterns. Previous studies show that improvement in adherence to healthy dietary patterns is associated with less weight gain (2, 3, 4). But, until now, no study had assessed the interaction betwe...

To read the full abstract: J Pediatr Endocrinol Metab 2018; 31(6):601-608This article summarizes the findings of likely the largest program of neonatal congenital hypothyroidism (CH) screening in the world. This is a truly impressive effort. The overall incidence of CH was 1/2421, in line with other reports that also observed a relatively high incidence of CH in neonates born in Asia. However, a...

To read the full abstract: Nature Communications 2018;9:1544Obesity prevalence is generally higher in women than in men, and there is also a sex difference in body fat distribution. Sex differences in obesity can be explained in part by the influence of gonadal steroids on body composition and appetite; however, behavioural, and socio-cultural factors may also play a role. Here is th...

Brief summary: Grzelka et al. identified a hypothalamic circuit that regulates regain of body weight after weight loss.Body weight is one of the most regulated variables of our body, which is most likely due to the evolutionary history of times when access to food was scarce and volatile. Weight loss triggers a strong counterregulatory response. It increases the hunger drive and greatly increases the reward value of food, making it more difficul...

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...

Brief summary: In this experimental study, genome editing and in vitro pancreatic differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (SC) were used to generate ZNT8 loss-of-function (LOF) SC-β-cells. These cells showed accelerated functional maturation, increased insulin secretion and improved resistance to metabolic stress. Transplantation of ZnT8 LOF SC-β-cells into mice with preexisting diabetes significantly improved their glucose levels.<...

Nat Commun. 2020 Aug 13;11(1):4063. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17890-2. PMID: 32792525.These researchers proposed the heterogeneity of hypothalamic neural progenitor cells. Other than traditional hypothalamic radial glial (hRG) cells, which are predominantly located in the ventricular zone, there are additional basal progenitors in the mantle zone, which are named as hypothalamic mantle zo...

Nat Commun. 2020;11:4807. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-18497-3.This interesting paper illustrates the potential of machine learning to improve the sensitivity and specificity of routine techniques in clinical practice if large cohorts for training and validation of models are used. Yu et al. present a transfer learning model (machine learning approach to solve research problems by r...