Clinical Medicine Insights: Pediatrics

Pietro Galassetti, MD, PhD, is Associate professor of Pediatrics and Pharmacology at the University of California, Irvine, where he also serves as the Director of the Bionutrition/Metabolism Core at the General Clinical Research Center, and as Associate Director of the Pediatric Exercise Research Center.

Dr Galassetti received his MD (1986) and his Internal Medicine Specialist (1993) degrees from Rome University, and his PhD in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics (1998) from Vanderbilt University. The author of over 70 peer-reviewed publications, over the past decade Dr Galassetti has developed several parallel lines of research with the common theme of the prevention and monitoring of progression of complications in dysmetabolic states, including pediatric obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 1 and type 2 diabetes. In particular his research, currently funded by four extramural grants from the NIH and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, has focused on the definition of the effects of hypo- and hyperglycemia on the counterregulatory, inflammatory and growth factor response to exercise in children with type 1 diabetes; on the definition of oxidative stress and altered leukocyte gene expression in response to exercise in obese and metabolic syndrome children; and on the development of a novel, non-invasive technique of metabolic monitoring through analysis of infinitesimal concentrations of volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath. Dr Galassetti is also responsible for the national coordination of physical measures in the STOPP-T2D study, a national, multi-centric school-based NIH study implementing prevention strategies against obesity and type 2 diabetes in thousands of 6th-8th graders.

The recipient of several scientific national awards, Dr Galassetti is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Physiology, acts as a reviewer for about 20 scientific journals, and as a grant reviewer for the NIH, the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and several international scientific foundations.