Endocrinology News

Clinicians should consider screening “at-risk” newborns for neonatal hypoglycemia within the first few hours of birth and through multiple feed cycles to help them better predict acute or chronic irreversible neurological damage, according to a report issued this week by the American Academy of Physicians.

Researchers have found a “clinically significant association” between enterovirus infection and type 1 diabetes. Children with type 1 diabetes are about 10 times more likely to have had an enterovirus infection than children without diabetes.

Since the Institute of Medicine’s report on Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium and Vitamin D was released in November, vitamin D has been the subject of controversy.

Tonsillectomy and excessive weight gain in children may be linked, researchers found.

What have we gotten ourselves into?

Type 2 diabetes and dyslipidemias have, until recently, been the traditional realm of the internist and family practitioner, not the pediatrician. Type 1 diabetes, on the contrary, was thought to be a disease of “juvenile onset,” and, by adulthood, a cause of long-term poor outcomes.

Predicted mean annual total medical expenditures for potentially preventable diabetic ketoacidosis exceed $14,000 for US youth with insulin-treated diabetes compared with $8,000 for youth without diabetic ketoacidosis, researchers reported.

Children who are overweight are not only at an increased risk for diabetes before puberty, but new findings suggest that they are also at an increased risk for low bone mineral density. Central adiposity may be more likely to decrease bone development when compared with overall adiposity in this population.

Women with HIV who take vitamin A and beta carotene may be significantly more likely to transmit the infection to their infants than women not taking those vitamins, according to recent study findings. Results of a companion study indicated that women taking vitamin supplements may be at increased risk for subclinical mastitis.

Although the prevalence of high BMI has recently declined in children and adolescents, disparities in BMI are still observed in several racial/ethnic groups, particularly black and American Indian girls.