ESPE Abstracts

Background/Objective: Smoking during pregnancy is known to influence prenatal/postnatal growth of the offspring. We investigated the impact of smoking in the Swedish reference population for new reference for height, weight and BMI, the GrowUp1990Gothenburg cohort.Material/Methods: The study was based on 1907 healthy children (918girls/989boys) born at term in Sweden with Nordic parents and longitudinal growth measurements. 155girls/180b...

Background and aim: How gestational age and size at birth are related to the timing of puberty and the adult height of an individual is not well known. Children born small, either preterm or small for gestational age (SGA), are known to be shorter than their peers during childhood. Both adult height and pubertal timing depends on both genetical and environmental factors, have changed over time with broad individual variations. Previous studies have shown confl...

Background and Aim: Despite the broad individual variation of pubertal maturation, references traditionally describe growth in relation to just chronological age and not biological age. Hence, growth references for the adolescent period have been of limited usefulness for monitoring individual growth in clinic and for research. Especially for children and adolescents with chronic diseases is there a need to better evaluate if changes in SD-scores just before a...

Background: Since growth patterns change with time due to secular changes, there is a need to regularly update growth references1. We developed the first continuous birth size reference, from gestational age 24weeks with infancy growth references2, computerized 2006 and used in Swedish health care settings and neonatal units. We now aimed to update this reference by exchanging GrowUp1974Gothenburg cohort to a selected population of health...

Objective: Patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) seldom achieve their target height. Early adrenarche may accelerate bone age maturation and affect adult height. The QEPS-growth-model have been used for developing growth references and investigating healthy/pathological growth, however, not before used in individuals with endocrine disorders. This study aimed to evaluate growth patterns in CAH-patients with the QEPS-model.<s...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide effects on child health globally. Increased prevalence of childhood obesity has been observed during the pandemic. The absence of a formal societal lockdown during the pandemic, made Sweden stand out compared to other countries. Several studies have shown increases in obesity in children during the COVID-19 pandemic. These studies mainly focused on school age children and adolescents in countries that underwent pe...

Background/Aim: The trade-off theory claims that a resource (calorie) stored in adipose tissue cannot be used for longitudinal growth, and a calorie used for growth will not be stored as fat.Methods: Out of 2339 children with longitudinal heights and weights (birth to adulthood) from the GrowUp1990 Gothenburg cohort, 1993 (996 girls) were analyzed. For everyone we calculated Energy Trade-Off Score: ETOS = at early adulth...

Background: Height references have been available for decades, although only related to chronological age and not considering the broad individual variation in the timing and tempo of pubertal maturation and growth. Therefore, growth references and growth charts for the adolescent period have been of limited usefulness both for monitoring growth in individuals and for research. To fill this gap, we recently developed a new type of height reference based on gro...

Background: Both timing of menarche and growth patterns have changed with time (secular changes), highlighting the need of updated knowledge in this topic1. Questions how growth is related to menarche are common in pediatric/pediatric endocrine outpatient clinics. The QEPS-growth model makes it possible to conduct detailed analyses of pubertal growth2.Objective: To investigate the relationship betwe...

Background: Few studies have investigated how the pubertal increase in testicular volume (TV) is related to pubertal growth spurt in a longitudinal setting. Increased TV, indicating onset of puberty in boys, mirrors the enhanced testosterone production in the testicles which also give rise to the pubertal growth spurt. The QEPS-growth model makes it possible to conduct detailed analyses of pubertal growth and separate total growth into specific pubertal (P-fun...