ESPE Abstracts

Background: SHOX encodes a transcription factor implicated in skeletal development. Approximately 70% and ~2.5% of Leri-Weill dyschondrosteosis (LWD) and idiopathic short stature (ISS) patients, respectively, have a defect in SHOX or its regulatory regions.Objective and hypotheses: i) To perform SHOX mutation screening in a cohort of 585 patients referred with a clinical suspicion of LWD or ISS. ii) To determine which is the <e...

Aim: Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) is a genetic disease of extracellular matrix presenting with varying degrees of skeletal fragility. The study aims to evaluate growth and pubertal characteristics of 83 patients with OI.Materials and methods: Patients were classified according to Sillence clinical classification criteria. Demographic data, clinical findings, growth and pubertal characteristics were recorded from medical charts, retrospec...

Background: Tissue sensitivity to glucocorticoids is characterized by significant inter-individual variation in terms of therapeutic response and susceptibility to several stress-related disorders. Proteomics approaches, combined with appropriate bioinformatics analysis, offer a comprehensive description of molecular phenotypes with clear links to human disease pathophysiology.Objective and Hypotheses: To investigate the usefulness of pl...

Aim: The majority of children born small for gestational age (SGA) demonstrate spontaneous catch-up growth in height by the age of two years; however, approximately 10-15% of SGA newborns are at risk of having subnormal growth and persistent short stature (PSS).Method: We evaluated clinical, anthropometric, and laboratory characteristics of the 86 children with PSS who were born SGA.Results...

Introduction: Genetic syndromes often show suggestive facial features that provide clues for the diagnosis. Considering the high number of genetic syndromes and the possible overlap of some features, memorizing facial gestalt is a challenging task for clinicians. DeepGestalt technology, and its app Face2Gene, has a growing impact on the diagnosis and management of genetic diseases by analyzing the features detected in one or more facial images of affected indi...

The current lifestyle, with a diet increasingly removed from the Mediterranean diet, together with the habitual sedentary lifestyle, is associated with many of the so-called non-communicable diseases, such as the metabolic syndrome. Every day these pathologies are more frequent in pediatrics, so this study has tried to establish the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and its components in overweight and obese children and assess its impact. METHODS A descriptive study has been c...

Introduction: The influence of sex chromosomes and sex hormones on early human brain development is still poorly understood. Expression of Y chromosome genes may influence aspects of brain maturation in the 46,XY fetus, but the contribution of different Y genes is unknown. Furthermore, a marked increase in testicular testosterone biosynthesis/release from the testis occurs at around 8 weeks post conception (wpc) in the 46,XY fetus, but it is unclear whether te...

Background: Turner syndrome (TS) arises from a complete or partial loss of one X chromosome (45,X) and is the most common genetic cause of primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) in women. Surprisingly little is understood about the pathogenesis of POI in TS beyond an acknowledged germ cell loss throughout the second trimester. Although X chromosome haploinsufficiency likely contributes, the variability in reproductive phenotype in 45,X TS suggests it is not the o...

Background: Melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) deficiency is the commonest monogenic form of non-syndromic obesity. MC4R is a seven transmembrane G-protein coupled receptor implicated in central regulation of body weight. The loss-of-function mutations in MC4R gene will contribute to early-onset obesity associated with hyperinsulinemia, hyperphagia and “binge eating”. We aim to determine the prevalence of MC4R variants in a Pediatrics...

Background: The sonic hedgehog pathway (SHH) regulates CNS development and mutations or abnormal expression of the SHH pathway genes have been identified in epithelial tumors. SHH pathway interacts with Wnt/β-catenin signalling. To date, CTNNB1/β-catenin mutations are the sole molecular abnormality found in adamantinomatous craniopharyngiomas (ACPs).Objective and Hypotheses: To analyze the expression pattern of SHH pathway genes in ACPs and its...