Young Investigator Award 2024

In 2006, the Foundation Acta Paediatrica instituted the annual Young Investigator Award, which is awarded to the first authors of papers who are up to 45 years of age. The winning candidates are selected by the Chairman of the Foundation and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. The prize was established to honour the journal's previous long-standing Editor-in-Chief, Rolf Zetterström.

Veronica Siljehav and her co-authors assessed 7268 very preterm infants admitted to neonatal units in 19 regions in 11 countries across Europe and examined the outcomes of the 292 (4%) who received inhaled nitric oxide [2]. The use of nitric oxide ranged from 1.2% in the UK to 10.5% in France, and there were also large regional variations within some countries. In-hospital mortality was higher among infants treated with nitric oxide compared with the 3502 matched controls. However, the long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes did not seem to be different between the groups at 5 years of age. This study clearly demonstrates that treating very preterm infants with nitric oxide was both ineffective and unethical, not to mention expensive.