Medical registries have been defined as “a database of identifiable persons containing a clearly defined set of health and demographic data collected for a specific public health purpose”. The first instance of such registries is widely reported to be the National Leprosy Registry of Norway in 1856. Modern registries have proliferated widely since the first commercial implementations of relational databases in the late 1970s and 1980s on the basis of theoretical work by Codd. That expansion was further facilitated by the development of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, increasing the ease of re ..read more

In 2021, we made a commitment to expand our youth engagement at The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health and launched our inaugural Youth Advisory Panel , with eight youth advisors aged 16–24 years from diverse backgrounds globally. The Youth Advisory Panel sits alongside our International Advisory Board and has been influential in the journal's work in the past 3 years. The editorial team has valued their thoughtful feedback on content and suggestions for topics, and enjoyed discussing issues such as gender equity, climate change, a career in research, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic ..read more

The PIBD-SETQuality Safety Registry enabled us to identify incidence rates of rare and severe adverse events in children with IBD. Our findings can guide physicians and enhance awareness of the incidence of adverse events in children with IBD that are considered to be rare ..read more

Schools have long been recognised as an opportune setting to promote mental health and wellbeing because they provide wide reach and broad access to programmes aiming to prevent mental health issues. Traditionally, school-based prevention programmes have grappled with low uptake and limited efficacy when directly targeting psychological factors through interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy Suggestions to develop and deliver indirect prevention programmes which target modifiable risk factors, such as sleep health, nutrition, physical activity, and alcohol use, have also showed lim ..read more

Depressive symptoms in adolescents were associated with their achievement goals, which could be targetable risk factors for future trials to investigate whether school-based interventions that aim to enhance factors consistent with mastery goals (ie, learning skills and understanding the subject, rather than assessing competence in comparison to peers) could prevent depression in adolescents ..read more

Children and neonates are highly vulnerable to the impact of antimicrobial resistance. Substantial barriers are faced in relation to research and development of antibacterial agents for use in neonates, children, and adolescents aged yonger than 19 years, and focusing finite resources on the most appropriate agents for development and paediatric optimisation is urgently needed. In November and December, 2022, following the successes of previous similar disease-focused exercises, WHO convened the first Paediatric Drug Optimisation (PADO) exercise for antibiotics, aiming to provide a shortlist o ..read more

Within a large cohort of febrile infants, a procalcitonin cutoff of 0·5 ng/mL had a superior pAUC value to a C-reactive protein cutoff of 20 mg/L for identifying invasive bacterial infections. In settings without access to procalcitonin, C-reactive protein should therefore be used cautiously for the identification of invasive bacterial infections, and a cutoff value below 20 mg/L should be considered. C-reactive protein and procalcitonin showed similar test accuracy for the identification of serious bacterial infection with internationally recognised cutoff values ..read more

Parental stroking delivered at an optimal speed to activate C-tactile fibres for a duration of 10 s before the painful procedure did not significantly change neonates' magnitude of pain-related brain activity, PIPP-R score, or development of tachycardia. The trial highlighted the challenge of translating an experimental researcher-led tactile intervention into a parent-led approach, and the value of involving parents in their baby's pain management ..read more

In this study, higher food responsiveness in early childhood was associated with a higher likelihood of self-reported eating disorder symptoms in adolescence, whereas greater satiety sensitivity and slower eating were associated with a lower likelihood of some eating disorder symptoms. Appetitive traits in children might be early neurobehavioural risk factors for, or markers of, subsequent eating disorder symptoms ..read more

Eating disorders affect children and adolescents worldwide and often have severe medical and psychosocial complications that persist throughout the life course. Eating disorders are increasingly common among adolescents and difficult to treat effectively, especially if not identified early. Despite decades of research, their aetiologies remain elusive. This has limited progress in the development of novel prevention and treatment interventions that offer more promise. New directions built on validated measures in large population-based samples are highly needed ..read more