Endocrine, Metabolic & Thermal

Mothers who have, or used to have, Graves' disease carry antibodies that can cross the placenta and briefly over-stimulate their baby's thyroid gland. Three 2026 studies show that a blood test in pregnancy can pick out the small number of babies at real risk, that hospitals do not always complete…

Many newborns have low blood sugar in their first hours of life, and when a first feed does not bring it up, some babies need a drip. A study of 400 babies in two Bangkok hospitals tested whether a small amount of concentrated sugar solution placed inside the cheek could help: it raised blood sugar…

Very premature babies lose heat fast after birth, so international experts suggest wrapping them in clear plastic in the first minutes of life. A follow-up of a large international trial found no clear difference in survival or development at about two years between wrapped and unwrapped babies…

Three new studies from China, England, and Pakistan show how the newborn heel-prick test for an underactive thyroid helps most babies, yet can miss a rarer form of the condition and sometimes never reaches the families who need it. In the studies, babies who started thyroid medicine early did well…

Very premature babies lose body heat quickly, so delivery-room teams wrap them in plastic to keep them warm. An Italian study of 354 very premature babies tested whether drying a baby with a warm towel first helps more babies reach the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at a healthy temperature…

A 2026 study from four hospitals in New York followed 128 children who were born a few weeks early, at 35 or 36 weeks of pregnancy, to see whether low blood sugar in their first day of life affected how they were developing at around 18 to 24 months. Babies whose blood sugar had dipped low, and who…

Babies build most of their skeleton in the last weeks of pregnancy. A baby born very early misses that window, and their bones can end up softer and more fragile than they should be — a condition doctors call metabolic bone disease of prematurity. Four studies published in 2025 and 2026 looked at…

Babies born very early miss the last three months of pregnancy, when the skeleton is built and the placenta supplies calcium and phosphorus faster than any feeding method can match afterwards. The result — softer, thinner bones, called metabolic bone disease of prematurity — is usually silent and…

Every newborn has a few drops of blood taken from the heel in the first days of life, and one of the conditions that blood is checked for is congenital adrenal hyperplasia — a treatable hormone disorder that can be fatal if missed. For decades this particular test has raised far more false alarms…

Some babies are born unable to clear ammonia, a waste product of protein breakdown, and can become dangerously ill within days of birth before anyone knows why. Two studies from 2025 and 2026 — one from a Chinese children's hospital, one from Spain's national registry — asked what changes when the…

Two clinical trials have tested a new medicine called dasiglucagon in children born with congenital hyperinsulinism, a rare condition in which the body makes too much insulin and blood sugar keeps falling dangerously low. In babies under one year old who depended on a sugar drip, the medicine cut…

Every newborn has a few drops of blood taken from the heel in the first days of life to check for rare but treatable conditions. In babies born early, one of those checks — for an underactive thyroid gland — often comes back normal even when the baby does have the condition. Two recent studies from…