ESPE Abstracts

For decades, the dominant conceptual framework for understanding short and tall stature was centered on the GH-IGF-I axis. However, recent findings in basic molecular and cellular biology and in clinical genetics have uncovered a vast array of other regulatory systems that control skeletal growth and an accompanying vast array of genetic defects outside the GH-IGF-I axis that can cause disorders of linear growth. As a result, the traditional view of short or tall stature that ...

Catch-up growth (CUG) is characterized by a period of supranormal height velocity following a transient period of growth inhibition. The two classical hypotheses on the mechanism are the neuro-endocrine hypothesis (a central mechanism that would recognize the degree of mismatch between actual size and target size) and the growth plate hypothesis (local regulation of growth according to a preset cellular program of senescence, characterized by decreasing growth proliferation ra...

Children’s linear growth is a complex process determined by genetic and environmental factors. It is well known that nutrition influences linear growth, but the precise mechanisms by which nutrition interact with height gain was never fully elucidated. In the present lecture, the way by which nutrition affects linear growth will be discussed. Specifically, we will discuss the effect of nutrition on the GH- IGF-1 axis and its local effect on the chondrocytes of the epiphys...