Animal Allergies

Food Allergies

Allergy, Immunology, and ENT

Cardiovascular Diseases

Cardiology

Acne

Atopic Dermatitis

Dermatology

Emergency Medicine

Diabetes

Endocrinology

Formula

Nutrition

Obesity

Gastroenterology

Genetic Testing

Antibiotic Resistance

Bacterial Conjunctivitis

COVID-19

Influenza

Pneumonia

Sexually Transmitted Diseases

Vaccination and Immunization

Vaccines

Infectious Diseases

ADHD

Addiction

Antisocial Personality Disorder

Anxiety

Autism

Depression

Developmental/Behavioral Disorders

Psychiatry

Mental, Behavioral and Development Health

Concussion

Epilepsy

Headache

Neurology

Neonatal/Perinatology

OB/GYN

Pain

Drug Pipeline News

Pharmacology

Telemedicine

Practice Improvement

Asthma

Cystic Fibrosis

Respiratory

Rheumatology

News 

All News

AAP News

PNP Corner

Media

Around the Practice

Cure Connections

Expert Interviews

Insights

Medcast

Peer Exchange

Peers & Perspectives

Podcasts

Webinars

Puzzler

Publications

Contemporary Pediatrics Journal

Supplements And Featured Publications

CME/CE

Resources

Handouts

Job Board

Conferences

Conference Coverage

Conference Listing

Partnerships

Subscribe

Editorial

Editorial Advisory Board

Writer’s Guidelines

Reference Guidelines

Meet the Editors

Tracey Gaslin, PhD, CPNP, FNP-BC, CRNI, RN-BC, CEO, Alliance for Camp Health.

Articles

In this Q&A, nurse practitioner Tracey Gaslin, PhD, discusses tick bites in pediatric patients, from how to prevent a bite to what to do after a bite, and highlights resources available from the Fight the Bite initiative.

Talking ticks with Tracey Gaslin, PhD, CPNP, FNP-BC, CRNI, RN-BC

 and joined the MJH Life Sciences team in December 2019. She graduated from Youngstown State University in 2019 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and a minor in political science. Prior to graduating, Morgan worked as the editor-in-chief of her college newspaper. She went on to work as an assignment editor at a broadcast news station in Youngstown, Ohio before joining 

 You can reach her at mpetronelli@mjhlifesciences.com.

Donna Hallas, PhD, PPCNP-BC, CPNP, PMHS, FAANP, FAAN, shares her thoughts on a featured article from the October 2025 issue of Contemporary Pediatrics.

Screening for suicide ideation and suicide attempts is a priority

. He joined the brand in March of 2023 as an editor before being promoted to senior editor in January 2024. Fitch graduated from Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio in 2020 with a degree in telecommunications and journalism. He started his career as a news and sports videographer before becoming an on-air sports anchor at the NBC-affiliated news station in Youngstown. Fitch briefly worked as a national content writer for a Chicago-based national television station before joining the 

team. He can be reached at: jfitch@mjhlifesciences.com.

Key highlights from the conference included public health, advocacy for vaccines, and artificial intelligence.

Our coverage recap from IDWeek 2025

Horton, Jennifer, MD, University of Utah, Primary Children’s Hospital. 

He had no prior history of recurrent ear infections, abscesses, or boils. Can you guess the diagnosis?

Can you diagnose this 10-year-old with an oozy ear?

Contemporary Pediatrics connects pediatricians with peer-reviewed articles, guideline updates, and practice strategies for real-world clinical application.

About Us

Advertise

Contact Us

Terms and Conditions

Privacy

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

Contemporary Pediatrics – Clinical News & Pediatrician Practice Tips

Facebook

LinkedIn

Instagram

Clinical

Gynecology

Infectious disease

Mental Health

Oncology

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Sexual Health

View More

1rem

Authors

An otherwise healthy 5-month-old girl presents with an asymptomatic, rapidly growing, firm, smooth nodule on the side of her left fifth finger since she was 2 months of age.

Rapidly growing nodule on an infant’s finger

**Editor's Note** Please note that starting January 1, 2025, we will be switching to an online-exclusive publication process. This will allow us to publish case submissions quicker without having to deal with the variables that come along with print publication. All cases will still be eligible for print publication consideration, but publication in our print magazine is not guaranteed and will be up to the editor's discretion. 

Do you have a puzzling pediatric case that you’d like to share with the readers of 

We are looking for intriguing diagnoses that have stumped the experts—a diagnostic “Puzzler”—to help our physicians enhance their day-to-day practices. If you have such a story to tell, tell us.

Here’s what to do: Before you begin, we suggest that first you review the Puzzler 

https://www.contemporarypediatrics.com/case-studies

. Please note the specific style required for writing Puzzler manuscripts.

Next, prepare a draft of your case, including a summary of the presenting symptoms, a case overview, a 

table of the differential diagnosis (MANDATORY)

, and the special aspects of your case that qualify it as a Puzzler, and send it to us. Please note that the differential diagnosis table should also be discussed in the body text. We’ll review your draft and let you know what you need to add or revise before we send the manuscript to peer review for evaluation.

Puzzlers vary in length, and we suggest a minimum of 1,200 words up to a maximum of 2,000 words, but that is because of the complexity of some cases and whether some patients returned for many assessments before their diagnoses were determined. Also, some authors describe the pathophysiology of the differentials in great detail. Please also note no more than 3 authors are allowed per article.

What's most important is to show us the process that you used to analyze the case, including:

Why you decided to order certain tests and why you did not order others.

Peer consultations or why you elected to contact other specialists.

Lab values including vital signs or blood tests.

Labs and values if your patient was attended to in the emergency department or other hospital departments such as radiology or neurology.

Discussion related to the possible diagnoses.

Final diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and follow-up.

Remember to indicate numbered citations within the body of the text and include a complete list of corresponding literature/references at the end of the manuscript. (Do not use any citation management programs or unlink them.) 

Limit references to 25. No references (unless it is a seminal study) can be older than 10 years.

We prefer primary research as references, but some cases are so obscure that authors will need to pull from a variety of sources. However, 

. Be advised that peer reviewers are adamant that the disease/disorder you describe was actually diagnosed and not determined by index of suspicion on the basis of ruling out various differentials. We use AMA11 as our publication style, which uses superscript citation numbers and a corresponding numbered reference list. Please create your citations and references in this style.  Check this recent article posted online at 

https://www.contemporarypediatrics.com/view/the-rx-of-adhd

 for examples of reference style. IMPORTANT NOTE WITH AMA 11TH EDITION: PLEASE PUT DOI OR WEBSITES/URLS AT THE END OF THE REFERENCE LINE.

When you send your draft manuscript, also 

. These image files must be high-resolution jpg or tiff files (minimum of 300 dpi) and as large in size as possible. We suggest a minimum of 7 horizontal inches. The images must be original photos with clear permissions to use, not images from copyrighted sources. Send as separate attachments with your e-mail submission; do not embed images into your manuscript document.

After we receive your manuscript, our editors and peer reviewers will review your draft and let you know if we accept your submission for publication. 

Puzzler is one of the departments for which we receive the most submissions, so it may be several months after submission before you receive feedback from us.

If we do accept your submission for publication, we will contact you with further instructions.

Send your submissions in Microsoft Word format to 

, via e-mail to mpetronelli@mjhlifesciences.com

Guidelines for PUZZLER, Contemporary Pediatrics

At the 2025 CNS Annual Meeting, Craig Press, MD, PhD, discussed challenges in achieving equitable access to diagnostics and expertise in pediatric neurocritical care.

Craig Press, MD, PhD, highlights challenges in pediatric precision care for epilepsy

At the 2025 Child Neurology Society (CNS) Annual Meeting in Charlotte, Craig Press, MD, PhD, associate professor of clinical neurology at the University of Pennsylvania and medical director of the Neuroscience Unit at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, discussed the growing need for expanded access to genetic testing and multidisciplinary expertise in pediatric neurocritical care.

Press presented during the session “Bringing Precision Therapy to the Neurocritical Care Bedside,” part of Seminar 7: 

Optimizing NeuroICU Care: Treating Patients Rather Than Seizures.

 His presentation highlighted how evolving diagnostic tools and data-driven strategies are helping clinicians better tailor treatments to the individual needs of children experiencing neurologic crises.

“In children who present with early epilepsy, we often need genetic testing to better understand the underlying cause,” Press said. “The timeframe to receive those results can still take weeks to months, although rapid genetic tests are available. However, they aren’t accessible at every institution or for every patient. Expanding access to these tests will be critical.”

According to Press, limited availability of rapid genetic testing can delay diagnosis and timely therapeutic decisions in acute pediatric cases. Increasing access to these resources across institutions could help shorten diagnostic timelines and improve precision treatment planning.

Expanding institutional access to rapid genetic testing platforms

Reducing turnaround times for results to improve clinical decision-making

Ensuring equitable access for all pediatric patients regardless of location

Building expertise across the care continuum

Press also emphasized the importance of training clinicians to interpret and apply emerging diagnostic tools, including EEG and immunologic biomarkers. “This isn’t a skill set that most clinicians learned in medical school, residency, or fellowship,” he said. “Figuring out how to extend that expertise across institutions and build multidisciplinary teams to answer these questions—and bring all those resources to bear at the right time—is one of our biggest needs.”

He added that professional organizations such as the Child Neurology Society and the American Epilepsy Society have started offering educational programs focused on precision medicine in pediatric neurology. Still, Press noted that meaningful progress will depend on continued investment in training, resources, and collaboration to ensure that precision therapies reach every child who may benefit.

Press C. Bringing Precision Therapy to the Neurocritical Care Bedside. Presented at: 2025 Child Neurology Society. October 8-11. Charlotte, North Carolina. 

News

An international team of researchers has developed a polygenic risk score (PGS) that significantly improves the prediction of obesity risk from early childhood through adulthood. Drawing from the genetic data of more than 5 million individuals, the new PGS was found to be twice as effective as the previous best-performing genetic test in predicting future obesity risk, particularly among individuals of European ancestry. The findings were published in 

The new PGS was created using genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics from the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) consortium and 23andMe, Inc. This dataset included individuals from diverse ancestral backgrounds: 71.1% of European ancestry, 14.4% American, 8.4% East Asian, 4.6% African, and 1.5% South Asian ancestry. Researchers developed both ancestry-specific and multiancestry PGS using these data.

The study team tested the PGS in multiple cohorts, including the UK Biobank, Million Veteran Program, BioMe Biobank, and others. In European-ancestry individuals from the UK Biobank, the multiancestry PGS explained 17.6% of the variation in body mass index (BMI), an improvement over the 8.5% explained by the earlier PGS developed by Khera et al. Performance was lower in populations with African-like ancestry, where the explained variance ranged from 2.2% in the Uganda General Population Cohort to 6.3% in African American populations.

“This new polygenic score is a dramatic improvement in predictive power and a leap forward in the genetic prediction of obesity risk, which brings us much closer to clinically useful genetic testing,” said Ruth Loos, PhD, senior author of the study and professor at the University of Copenhagen’s NNF Center for Basic Metabolic Research.

Importantly, the score demonstrated predictive value early in life. In the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, children with higher PGSs showed accelerated BMI gain beginning at 2.5 years of age and had an earlier adiposity rebound compared with peers. Adding the PGS to predictors available at birth nearly doubled the explained variance in BMI at age 8—from 11% to 21%. Including the PGS alongside BMI measurements at age 5 increased the explained variance in BMI at age 18 from 22% to 35%.

“What makes the score so powerful is its ability to predict, before the age of 5, whether a child is likely to develop obesity in adulthood, well before other risk factors start to shape their weight later in childhood,” said lead author Roelof Smit, PhD. “Intervening at this point can have a huge impact.”

Researchers also evaluated the PGS in 2 randomized controlled trials of lifestyle interventions—the Diabetes Prevention Program and the Look AHEAD study. Individuals with higher PGS lost more weight during the first year of intervention (–0.55 kg per standard deviation increase in PGS) but regained weight more quickly in subsequent years.

The findings emphasize that while genetics confer risk, they do not determine outcomes. “Genetics is not destiny,” the press release stated. Individuals with a high genetic risk of obesity still responded to behavioral interventions, albeit with a tendency toward faster weight regain when the intervention ceased.

The authors acknowledged that predictive performance varied by ancestry, with better results in individuals of European ancestry. Despite the diverse composition of the training data set, prediction in individuals with African ancestry remained limited. This discrepancy is likely due to underrepresentation of African ancestry populations in GWAS data and differences in genetic architecture, such as allele frequencies and linkage disequilibrium patterns.

The researchers concluded that polygenic prediction may support early identification of children at elevated risk of obesity and inform targeted prevention efforts. However, they cautioned that further research is needed to improve predictive accuracy across diverse ancestral backgrounds and to evaluate the implementation of PGS in clinical settings.

Smit RAJ, Wade KH, Hui Q, et al. Polygenic prediction of body mass index and obesity through the life course and across ancestries. 

. Published online July 21, 2025. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03827-z

University of Copenhagen - The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. Genetic test predicts obesity in childhood. EurekAlert. July 21, 2025. Accessed July 21, 2025. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1091391

A new polygenic risk score enhances obesity risk prediction from childhood to adulthood, offering new insights for early intervention and prevention strategies.

New genetic test predicts obesity risk in early childhood

 poll. Take a look at the following case below. After reading through the description, choose a multiple-choice answer and try to guess the correct patient diagnosis.

Then visit our website on August 20 at 12:00 PM EST or later for the full case presentation, differential diagnosis, and correct patient diagnosis.

This case was provided by Andrew Faniku, MD, pediatric hospitalist at Scott & White Healthcare.

A 21-year-old primigravida female presented to the hospital in preterm labor, with an otherwise uneventful pregnancy except for a febrile illness after exposure to family members with measles a week prior.

She reported having fever, cough, conjunctivitis, and a rash that started on her face and spread to her trunk, consistent with measles. Her fever and symptoms had mostly resolved, except for her lingering rash that began six days earlier. In the delivery room, she still had fresh excoriation marks on her arms. She had not received any MMR vaccines.

Six hours after admission, the patient delivered a female infant via spontaneous vaginal delivery at 35 weeks’ gestation. The baby weighed 2410 grams, which was approximately the 50

 percentile for her gestational age. The baby had mild respiratory distress after delivery and briefly required supplemental oxygen via blow by during transitioning. Apgar’s of 8 at 1 minute and 9 at 5 minutes was given at delivery. The baby subsequently improved and was allowed to room in with mother without the need for NICU admission. Nursing staff noticed a rash on the baby’s back. 

Below, take your best guess at diagnosing this patient

 website on Wednesday, August 20 at 12:00 PM EST or later for the full case presentation, differential diagnosis, and correct patient diagnosis.

Case Studies

Can you diagnose this rash in a newborn?

This case was presented by Rutva Vora, BS; and Monica Guirguis, DO.

A 2-month-old girl was born after an uneventful pregnancy at 40 weeks’ gestation via vacuum-assisted vaginal delivery to a G2P1011 female. The patient’s APGAR scores were 7 and 9 at 1 and 5 minutes, respectively, at birth. No bleeding or other complications were reported during delivery. The newborn and mother were discharged two days after delivery without requiring neonatal intensive care unit stay or interventions. The infant briefly developed a small soft palpable scalp swelling that resolved within days after delivery. The patient followed an otherwise uncomplicated growth progression since birth. She did exhibit mild reflux symptoms, which were managed with supportive care measures. Physical examination after delivery and subsequent exams revealed no abnormalities, including no signs of scalp swelling or injury.

At 8 weeks of age, the patient presented to the emergency department with a 3-day history of new-onset scalp swelling. The parents decided to seek medical attention after the swelling became noticeably enlarged. Parents denied any changes in her mental status, vomiting, fevers, lethargy, irritability, or any other new concerns. She did have symptoms of gassiness and fussiness that were unchanged from baseline. No history of trauma was reported, and there were no concerning signs suggestive of nonaccidental trauma. The patient appeared well, with a soft, fluctuant palpable subcutaneous fluid collection overlying the parieto-occipital scalp, without crossing suture lines. The anterior fontanelle was soft and nonbulging, and there was no hemotympanum.

Bleeding disorder (e.g. Von Willebrand Disease)

Can you diagnose this patient? Take our poll and find out! Then check back for the full case, differential diagnosis, and correct diagnosis.

Diagnose this 2-month-old with scalp swelling

 poll. Take a look at the following case below. After reading through the description, choose a multiple choice answer and try to guess the correct patient diagnosis.

The photos in this case were taken soon after the painful and red papules appeared.

Clare A Goggins, BS, MS4

Articles

Latest Updated Articles