About the authors

Thomas H Inge

Thomas H Inge, MD, is an Associate Professor, Division of Pediatric Surgery at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA. His research focuses on pediatric obesity and pediatric surgical outcomes. He has been awarded numerous local and federal research grants. He is the Chairman of the Teen-Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery (Teen-LABS, www.cchmc.org/teen-LABS), a multicenter clinical study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, that will examine safety and efficacy of adolescent bariatric surgery.

Paul Pfluger

Paul Pfluger is a Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA.

Meg Zeller

Meg Zeller is an Associate Professor in the Division of Behavioral Medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Cincinnati, OH, USA.

Susan R Rose

Susan R Rose, MD, is a Professor it the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital and the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA. She has clinical expertise and research interests in thyroid hormone disorders, disorders of growth or puberty, and effects of central nervous system injury on hypothalamic-pituitary function (head injury, cranial irradiation, anoxia, iron overload).

Lukas Burget

Lukas Burget finished Medical school at the University of Munich (LMU) in 2004 and started working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Obesity Research Center of the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA, under Matthias Tschöp for 7 months. He then went back to Munich starting his residency for Internal Medicine and Endocrinology and in parallel established a rodent-based animal facility dealing with central nervous appetite regulation and macronutritional effects on metabolism. Since May 2007 he has been working as a resident at the Kantonsspital Luzern, Switzerland.

Sumana Sundararajan

Sumana Sundararajan, MD, is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, Cleveland, OH, USA. In addition to her clinical responsibilities, she is also involved in the multidisciplinary outpatient weight management program at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital and the brain tumor survivor clinic at the Ireland Cancer Center. She is also a co-investigator in a multicenter, NIH-sponsored study investigating type 2 diabetes in adolescents.

Stephen R Daniels

Stephen R Daniels, MD, PhD, is a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado in Denver, CO, USA, and Health Sciences Center. Over the years, he has received numerous NIH grants in the area of preventive cardiology. He is currently involved in trials to study social status impact on adolescent health and childhood precursors for adulthood metabolic syndrome and is the principal investigator of a study evaluating cardiovascular disease in adolescents with type 2 diabetes. Dr Daniels has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications, with a recent focus on childhood obesity, lipid abnormalities in youth, and cardiovascular disease prevention in children and adolescents.

Matthias H Tschöp

Matthias H Tschöp, MD, is an Associate Professor, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA. He leads a basic research laboratory at the University's Obesity Research Centre and a pharmacology laboratory at the German Institute of Human Nutrition, Potsdam, Germany. His scientific interest is focused on the regulation of energy, glucose and lipid metabolism by neuroendocrine circuits.