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Desiree Silva MBBS, FRACP, MPH, PhD Co-Director, ORIGINS desiree.silva@thekids.org.au Co-Head, The ORIGINS Project Professor Desiree Silva is
Desiree Peter Silva Richmond MBBS, FRACP, MPH, PhD MBBS MRCP(UK) FRACP Co-Director, ORIGINS Head, Vaccine Trials Group desiree.silva@thekids.org.au
Co-Head, The ORIGINS Project
Maternal diet during pregnancy has long been recognised as an important determinant of neonatal outcomes and child development. Infant body composition is a potentially modifiable risk factor for predicting future health and metabolic disease.
Iron deficiency (ID) is the most common nutritional deficiency affecting young children. Serum ferritin concentration is the preferred biomarker for measuring iron status because it reflects iron stores; however, blood collection can be distressing for young children and can be logistically difficult. A noninvasive means to measure iron status would be attractive to either diagnose or screen for ID in young children.
Children far in advance of pubertal development may be deferred from further assessment for gender-affirming medical treatment until nearer puberty. It is vital that returning peripubertal patients are seen promptly to ensure time-sensitive assessment and provision of puberty suppression treatment where appropriate.
There is mounting concern over the potential harms associated with ultra-processed foods, including poor mental health and antisocial behavior. Cutting-edge research provides an enhanced understanding of biophysiological mechanisms, including microbiome pathways, and invites a historical reexamination of earlier work that investigated the relationship between nutrition and criminal behavior. Here, in this perspective article, we explore how this emergent research casts new light and greater significance on previous key observations.
Early onset Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), including obesity, allergies, and mental ill-health in childhood, present a serious and increasing threat to lifelong health and longevity. The ORIGINS Project (ORIGINS) addresses the urgent need for multidisciplinary efforts to understand the detrimental multisystem impacts of modern environments using well-curated large-scale longitudinal biological sample collections.
The vast and growing challenges for human health and all life on Earth require urgent and deep structural changes to the way in which we live. Broken relationships with nature are at the core of both the modern health crisis and the erosion of planetary health. A declining connection to nature has been implicated in the exploitative attitudes that underpin the degradation of both physical and social environments and almost all aspects of personal physical, mental, and spiritual health.
Infant allergy is the most common early manifestation of an increasing propensity for inflammation and immune dysregulation in modern environments. Refined low-fibre diets are a major risk for inflammatory diseases through adverse effects on the composition and function of gut microbiota. This has focused attention on the potential of prebiotic dietary fibres to favourably change gut microbiota, for local and systemic anti-inflammatory effects.