Thyroid: Physiology and Disease

This year’s search for thyroid publications has again revealed a number of more than 3,000 references under the search heading ‘thyroid’. The selection for those papers which might have an impact for the pediatric endocrine community, either due to the general new information about thyroid function or due to its relevance for clinical purposes, ended up with a list of 0.8% of this large number of publications. Among these selections some ‘streams of themes’ of several papers under the same topic could be identified. The impact of selenium as an important trace element for the synthesis of deiodinases, and therefore for the regulation of the thyroid system, was one of these themes. The most relevant questions of pediatric thyroid hormone treatment were also touched this year with several papers focusing on the impact of thyroid hormone for prenatal, preterm and postnatal CNS development. The hottest topic in terms of impact was a ‘burning paper’ describing a new role for bile acids on energy expenditure, with the help of locally activated thyroid hormone in target cells.