ESPE Abstracts

Keywords: COVID 19, height trajectory, rGH

Background: Various factors can interfere with height and body mass index (BMI) trajectories and therefore, auxological parameters reflect children’s health status. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an important impact on all the social determinants of health.

Aim: The aim of the current study was to assess the effect of recombinant growth hormone (rGH) treatment on height and BMI trajectories in children before and during the first three years of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Methods: This was a retrospective data analysis of children evaluated between 2019-2022 in a tertiary Pediatric Endocrine Clinic from Romania. Demographic (age, sex, environment), anthropometric (height and BMI SDS) diagnosis and treatment (rGH) data was recorded and yearly changes in height and BMI were computed. Only subjects with at least one visit during each year analyzed were included. Data was analyzed using SPSS v25.0 with a level of significance α=0.05.

Results: Seventy-three children were included in the analysis, 48 under treatment with rGH and 25 without, all followed prospectively during the analyzed period. The treated group had a higher median age (13 vs.10 years, P=0.048) and male preponderance (P=0.025). Both groups had a positive BMI SDS trend during the first 2 years, and negative in the third, with no significant difference from start to finish (0.03 SDS in the non-treated vs. 0.2 SDS in the treated group, P=0.189). During the first year height had a positive trend in both groups, but the last two years the trajectories diverged, with the rGH treated children maintaining a positive trend, while the comparison group had a negative trend, leading to a significant difference in the end (0.09 SDS in the non-treated vs. 0.53 SDS in the treated group, P=0.003). In logistic regression, age and GH treatment were the significant contributing factors, with sex, environment, diagnosis and pubertal status having no statistically significant influence.

Discussions: All major social determinants of health were impacted by the COVID 19 pandemic and led to changes in auxological parameters trajectories. In our cohort, BMI trajectory recovered during the third year. Height trajectory had a negative trend during the second and third year of pandemic, but rGH treatment seemed to protect against it. Data from larger cohorts (rGH treatment registries) might bring useful new information.

Conclusions: The COVID 19 pandemic doesn’t seem to have had an influence on growth trajectories in this cohort of rGH treated children.