The body of knowledge in most medical specialties is rapidly expanding, making it virtually impossible to follow all advances in clinical and basic sciences that are relevant to a given field. This is particularly true in pediatric endocrinology, at the cross-road of pediatrics, endocrinology, development and genetics. Providing abstracts of articles that report the year's breakthrough developments in the basic sciences and evidence-based new knowledge in clinical research and clinical practice that are relevant to the field, the Yearbook of Pediatric Endocrinology 2012 keeps busy clinicians and scientists, pediatric endocrinologists, and also pediatricians and endocrinologists informed on new advances. Twelve Associate Editors and their co-authors selected from several thousand papers those that brought the most meaningful new information, summarized them and provided comments to put them into perspective. The papers are classified into those that identify new genes involved in diseases, new hormones, concepts revised or re-centered, important observations for clinical practice, large-scale clinical trials, new mechanisms, new paradigms, important review articles, new fears and new hopes. Because the Yearbook is endorsed by the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE), its publication is linked to the annual meeting of the ESPE. The Yearbook of Pediatric Endocrinology 2012 covers the medical and scientific literature from June 2011 through May 2012.