The early-life period, encompassing fetal development, infancy, and early childhood, represents a window of extraordinary vulnerability to environmental influences [...]
Krabbe disease (KD) is a rare inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by a deficiency in galactocerebrosidase enzyme activity, which can present in early infancy, requiring an urgent referral for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, or later...
One-third of children falter in cognitive development by pre-school age. Iron plays an important role in many neurodevelopmental processes, and animal studies suggest that iron sufficiency in pregnancy and infancy is particularly important for neurod...
Vision is an important aspect of a child’s quality of life and intellectual, social, and emotional development. Disruptions to vision during infancy and early childhood can cause lifelong vision impairment or blindness. However, early identific...
Lower vitamin D status at birth and during infancy has been associated with increased incidence of eczema and food allergies. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of early infancy vitamin D supplementation on allergic disease outcomes...
We examined the relationships between intergenerational obesity, weight and size at birth, and obesity from infancy to adolescence with weight loss in response to a dietary intervention. We studied 4264 participants (3369 women; mean age 41.5 ± 12.9...
Although the Zika virus (ZIKV) typically causes mild or no symptoms in adults, during the 2015−2016 outbreak, ZIKV infection in pregnancy resulted in a spectrum of diseases in infants, including birth defects and neurodevelopmental disorders id...
Pregnancy and early infancy represent two very particular immunological states. During pregnancy, the haploidentical fetus and the pregnant women develop tolerance mechanisms to avoid rejection; then, just after birth, the neonatal immune system must...
Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure is a public health concern linked to neurodevelopmental disorders like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Prior studies link ETS to ADHD, but gaps remain regarding gender differences, critical...
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a seasonal mucosal pathogen that infects the ciliated respiratory epithelium and results in the most severe morbidity in the first six months of life. RSV is a common cause of acute respiratory infection during in...
Long-term antibiotic use can have consequences on systemic diseases, such as obesity, allergy, and depression, implicating the causal role of gut microbiome imbalance. However, the evaluation of the effect of antibiotics in early infancy on alteratio...
Puberty is a crucial developmental stage in the life span, necessary to achieve reproductive and somatic maturity. Timing of puberty is modulated by and responds to central neurotransmitters, hormones, and environmental factors leading to hypothalami...
It remains unclear how the various environmental factors are combined in practice to influence vegetable preferences in school-aged children. This study aimed to clarify the environmental factors during infancy and their association with vegetable pr...
Background: Vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy or infancy is associated with adverse growth in children. No systematic review has been conducted to summarize available evidence on the effect of vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy and infancy on...
Vitamin K is essential for the synthesis of few coagulation factors. Infants can easily develop vitamin K deficiency owing to poor placental transfer, low vitamin K content in breast milk, and poor intestinal absorption due to immature gut flora and...
There has been increasing interest in understanding body composition in early life and factors that may influence its evolution. While several technologies exist to measure body composition in infancy, the equipment is typically large, and thus not r...
The concept of sustainable nutrition considers different fields: from human health to environmental, economic and socio-cultural aspects. Currently, in Europe, the diets that reflect the assumptions of the sustainable diet are the Mediterranean Diet...
26 May 2020
Childhood maltreatment (CM) is a pervasive public health problem worldwide, with negative health consequences across the lifespan. Despite these adverse outcomes, identifying children who are being maltreated remains a challenge. Thus, there is a nee...
This paper invokes cognitive developmental theory as a means for preparing citizens to deal with and resolve conflicts within or across nations. We take the centuries-old Greek–Turkish dispute as an example. We first outline a theory of intellectual...
Environmental exposures such as nutrition during life stages with high developmental plasticity—in particular, the in utero period, infancy, childhood, and puberty—may have long-lasting influences on risk of chronic diseases, including ob...
Rapid growth during infancy is associated with increased risk of overweight and obesity and differences in weight gain are at least partly explained by means of infant feeding. The aim was to assess the associations between infant feeding practice in...
An accepted conclusion is that children at risk for educational failure who participate in high-quality early care and education (ECE) enter kindergarten “more ready”, possessing skills comparable to their more advantaged peers. There is...
Developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) may require early abduction treatment with infants sleeping on their back for the first few months of life. As sleeping on back is known to cause deformational plagiocephaly, we assessed school age children t...
Background: Laron Syndrome (LS) is a rare hereditary form of dwarfism occurring, with few exceptions, in Jewish, Muslim, and Asian populations or their descendants spread over all continents. It is caused by deletions or mutations in the GH-Receptor...
Purpose: The aim of this literature review is to investigate the potential association between specific food difficulties and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during the first two years of life. Materials: The search was conducted in PubMed, Google Sch...
Early-life nutrition is an important modifiable determinant in the development of a child’s immune system, and may thereby influence the risk of allergic sensitization and atopic diseases. However, associations between overall dietary patterns and at...
Background: Salivary cortisol (SC), a commonly used biomarker for stress, may be disrupted by negative events in pregnancy, at birth and in infancy. We aimed to explore if maternal perceived stress (PSS) in or after pregnancy and SC levels in pregnan...
With positron emission tomography followed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we demonstrated that rapid eye movements (REMs) in sleep are saccades that scan dream imagery. The brain “sees” essentially the same way while awa...
Background: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a leading cause of lower respiratory tract infections in children, particularly severe during infancy. Maternal RSV-specific neutralizing antibodies (nAbs), transferred via the placenta, may provide pr...
Background: Food cue reactivity (FCR) has been associated with a higher obesity risk, but little is known about what factors influence FCR during infancy. This study examined the moderating effects of maternal feeding styles and bottle feeding on the...
24 May 2022
Fetal life and infancy are critical periods when adverse environmental conditions, such as natural disasters, may alter a developing organism, leading to life-lasting unfavorable health outcomes, such as central body fat distribution. Therefore, the...
13 April 2021
Speech and language acquisition is one of the key development indicators of optimal literacy development in infancy and early childhood. Over the last decade there has been increasing interest in the development of theoretical frameworks which underp...
Psychomotor developmental delay in infants includes failure to acquire abilities such as sitting, walking, grasping objects and communication at the ages when most infants have acquired these abilities. Known risk factors include a large number of as...
The high pace of gene discovery has resulted in thrilling advances in the field of epilepsy genetics. Clinical testing with comprehensive gene panels, exomes, or genomes are now increasingly available and have led to a significant higher diagnostic y...
The first 1000 days after birth represent a critical window for gut microbiome development, which is essential for immune system maturation and overall health. The gut microbiome undergoes major changes during this period due to shifts in diet and en...
Chromosome 15q26-qter deletion syndrome is a rare disease that causes prenatal and postnatal growth retardation, microcephaly, developmental delay, and congenital heart diseases, mainly due to haploinsufficiency of IGF1R. In addition, patients with p...
Infancy and early childhood are periods of dietary transition. Early exposure to specific foods and the establishment of dietary habits during this period can shape long-term food preferences and have lasting effects on health. This study aimed to ex...
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is the most common form of muscular dystrophy, typically affecting males in infancy. The disease causes progressive weakness and atrophy of skeletal muscles, with approximately 20,000 new cases diagnosed yearly. Curr...
In the interfollicular epidermis, keratinocyte stem cells (KSC) generate a short-lived population of transit amplifying (TA) cells that undergo terminal differentiation after several cell divisions. Recently, we isolated and characterized a highly pr...
High serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) levels have been observed in infants in Nordic countries, likely due to vitamin D supplement use. Internationally, little is known about tracking vitamin D status from infancy to childhood. Following up 1-year...
The general movements (GMs) assessment is useful for the prediction of cerebral palsy (CP) and other developmental disorders. Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is highly prevalent in low-birth-weight (LBW) infants. We investigated the associa...
2 July 2014
Establishing effective toothbrushing routines using fluoridated toothpaste in infancy has been suggested as important to dental health throughout childhood and into adulthood. However, previous studies have revealed a number of potential barriers to,...
Infants are at high risk for severe morbidity and mortality from pertussis disease during early infancy. Vaccination against pertussis in pregnancy has emerged as the ideal strategy to protect infants during these early, vulnerable, first months of l...
This prospective study enrolled 144 patients after surgical treatment of biliary atresia in early infancy. We analyzed the immediate effectiveness of the surgery and the age-related structure of complications in the up to 16-year follow-up. The immed...
Childhood cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among U.S. children between infancy and age 15. Despite successes in treating solid tumors such as Wilms tumor, disappointments in the outcomes of high-risk solid tumors like neuroblastoma hav...
Due to the incompleteness of animal genome sequencing, the analysis and characterization of serum proteomes of most farm animals are still in their infancy, compared to the already well-documented human serum proteome. This review focuses on the impl...
The Early Childhood Social Competence Scale (EC-SCS) was elaborated to evaluate social behavior on behalf of others in infantile populations. Due to the emergence and development of these behaviors from very early ages, the interest in its assessment...
The lung is home to a dynamic microbial population crucial to modulating immune balance. Interest in the role of the lung microbiota in disease pathogenesis and treatment has exponentially increased. In lung cancer, early studies suggested an importa...
Adversity during infancy can affect neurobehavioral development and perturb the maturation of physiological systems. Dysregulated immune and inflammatory responses contribute to many of the later effects on health. Whether normalization can occur fol...
In recent years, there has been a rise in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The diagnosis of ASD requires behavioral observation and standardized testing completed by highly trained experts. Early intervention for ASD can begin as ear...
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