It all starts in childhood. Yet it is difficult to find funding to really study these questions because the follow up timeline is long and thus very expensive but critically important. We don't even know what the "right" way to feed infants is in the first year of life to both limit cardiometabolic syndrome but also preserve neurodevelopmental outcome. We also have just started to see the tii of the iceberg in understanding... more »

Baby boys and girls can respond quite differently to replacement lung surfactants given in response to neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. There are also variations in efficacy between babies of different races, in addition to the generally increased risk of NRDS in minority populations overall to lack of prenatal care or access to neonatal intensive care units. Increasing the availability of surfactant treatment... more »