Bubble Wrap PLUS – December 2024

Can’t get enough of Bubble Wrap? The Bubble Wrap Plus is a monthly paediatric Journal Club reading list from Professor Jaan Toelen (University Hospitals Leuven) and Dr Anke Raaijmakers (Sydney Children’s Hospital). 

This comprehensive list is developed from 34 journals, including major and subspecialty paediatric journals. We suggest this list can help you discover relevant or interesting articles for your local journal club or allow you to keep a finger on the pulse of paediatric research.

Before the holiday season kicks in fully, we have a few highlights to share with you.  

In our review section, we included a paper on the pharmacotherapy of obese adolescents, which included a link to a video abstract. Paediatric obesity is a significant public health problem, affecting nearly 20% of children and adolescents living in the United States but also in many other countries around the world. This is an expert opinion clinical practice guideline for evaluating and managing child and adolescent obesity, which may become more and more critical. A patient-centred approach is a key management feature! And maybe TikTok champions will be the next scientific communicators of translational research, making these video abstracts mainstream… 

On another note, exercise is important for many reasons, but a recent meta-analysis explores its relation to the intelligence of our children and adolescents. Another reason is to keep them off their screens. In this issue of Pediatrics, Morales and colleagues investigated the effect of exercise on the brain. Although ‘exercise’ is quite a heterogeneous concept, there is evidence that exercise is associated with improvements in general and fluid intelligence in youth.

The following two highlights are on urinary tract infections. Firstly, many infants with febrile urinary tract infections (UTIs) do not have an underlying anatomical risk factor. In this issue of Pediatric Nephrology, Bahat et al. investigated the faecal microbiota composition between infants with or without UTI. Although a small study sample (42 total), they found a significant difference in diversity between the UTI and non-UTI groups. However, antibiotics might have influenced these results. Further studies should check if the differences in the abundance/enrichment of genera between these groups could have diagnostic or therapeutic implications. 

Secondly, recurrent urinary tract infections and optimal management, including prophylaxis, have been debated for decades. In this issue of Pediatrics, Gkiourtzis and colleagues performed a systematic review and meta-analysis on prophylaxis in children with recurrent urinary tract infections. Nitrofurantoin and cranberry products may decrease the incidence of symptomatic UTI episodes in paediatric patients. However, the effect of antibiotic resistance on further kidney scarring has not been proven, and we need to be mindful of it. It is promising to see that non-pharmacological interventions are beneficial. Still more work to do!

If we have missed out on something useful or you think other articles are absolutely worth sharing, please add them in the comments!