Contributions of pediatrics and pediatric pathology to the body of knowledge regarding human disease.

A century or so ago, pediatrics and pediatric pathology did not exist. Then, many fetuses/newborns died in utero or shortly after birth. With time, the issue of sepsis was addressed, and a greater number of newborns survived. Gradually, in this soil, the disciplines of pediatrics and pediatric nursing arose, as some recognized that infants were not merely small adults but were, in fact, quite different. Years later, pediatric pathology developed as a field of exploration. Today, pediatric pathology is a specialty, as witnessed by training programs, societies devoted to research and education, an expanding number of textbooks and innovative research. Pediatric pathology is distinct from adult pathology, as seen by the diversity of malformations and metabolic diseases stemming from mutations, the immaturity of the newborn's immune system, and the types of neoplasms germane to infants and children. Much of the progress in these areas was facilitated by the simultaneous emergence of cytogenetics and molecular biology and their powerful tools of investigation. The latter were applied in a synergistic fashion to a major extent in maternity clinics and children's hospitals by, among others, molecular biologists, clinical geneticists, cytogeneticists, pediatricians, and pediatric pathologists. This article describes a select but small number of the many contributions of pediatrics and pediatric pathology to the current body of medical knowledge.