Optimizing Nutrition in Pediatrics: From Preterm Infants to Adolescents

Dear Colleagues,

Children's nutrition is essential for their proper growth and development. Adequate nutrition promotes physical development, immune system strength, and cognitive function. It supplies vital nutrients for organ growth and overall health, including vitamins, minerals, and proteins and helps to prevent child malnutrition and in the same time the risk of chronic diseases later in life.

Therefore it is important to provide all the essential macro and micronutrients at the right time and in the right quantity to allow childrens’ growth potential to be realized.

Unfortunately, this potential is not always achieved, especially in low-resource settings and in children suffering from chronic diseases or in preterm infants.

In particular, optimizing the nutritional status with an earlier and adequate nutrition can result in better growth and neurodevelopmental outcomes, reducing the comorbidities of preterm birth.

Furthermore, adequate nutritional support for an ill child can help to maintain or improve their nutritional status, reducing the risk of malnutrition and improving treatment tolerance.

Nutrition knowledge in the pediatric age has improved a lot in recent decades but there are still some topics that need to be further investigated.

Therefore the nutritional research directions of this Special Issue will include:

• Optimizing nutrition and growth in the preterm infants.
• Optimizing nutrition in the first 2 years of life (improving feeding with human milk and starting adequate nutritional habits).
• Strategies to prevent and early detect macro and micronutrient deficiencies in children
• Strategies to improve nutrition in the sick children.

Dr. Giovanna Verlato
Guest Editor

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