The body of knowledge in most medical specialties is rapidly expanding, making it virtually impossible to follow all advances in clinical and basic sciences that are relevant to a given field. This is particularly true in pediatric endocrinology, at the cross-road of pediatrics, endocrinology, development and genetics.

The ‘Yearbook of Pediatric Endocrinology 2008’ brings you abstracts of articles that reported the year’s breakthrough developments in the basic sciences and evidence-based new knowledge in clinical research and clinical practice that are relevant to the field. Twelve Associate Editors and their co-authors selected from several thousand papers those that brought the most meaningful new information, summarized them and provided comments to put them into perspective.

The papers are classified into those that identify new genes involved in diseases, new hormones, concepts revised or re-centered, important observations for clinical practice, large-scale clinical trials, new mechanisms, new paradigms, important review articles, new fears and new hopes.

This is the fifth volume of the ‘Yearbook of Pediatric Endocrinology’. To acknowledge the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE) endorsement of the Yearbook, the publication of the Yearbook is linked to ESPE’s annual meetings, covering the medical and scientific literature from March 2007 through May 2008. The ‘Yearbook of Pediatric Endocrinology 2008’ will help busy clinicians and scientists, pediatric endocrinologists, and also pediatricians and endocrinologists keep informed on new advances in their field.