ESPE Abstracts

Background: The Study and Collection of Observational data for Patients with easypod® Connect (SCOPE) French retrospective study follows children with growth disorders treated with recombinant human growth hormone (r-hGH) therapy via the easypod® connected injection device for up to 5 years.

Aim: To show the results from the SCOPE study analysing the adherence to r-hGH therapy in a real-world setting and its effect on catch-up growth in patients with growth disorders.

Methods: French patients aged between 4–17 years at GH treatment initiation and <18 years during treatment were selected for SCOPE study. Adherence and height data up to 36 and 30 months of treatment, respectively were extracted from easypod® connect ecosystem between June 2018 – December 2023. Adherence was classified as optimal (≥85% of injections) and suboptimal (<85% of injections). To evaluate catch-up growth (Δ height standard deviation score [HSDS]), broken-stick method was used to calculate mean ΔHSDS at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months.

Results: Adherence data for 481 patients with 44.9% females and 55.1% males (53.8% Growth hormone deficiency, 32.6% Small for gestational age, 2.7% Turner Syndrome, and 10.8% other or unknown) were available. Overall, 2,163 height measurements from 472 patients were available. At treatment initiation, mean (SD) age and mean (SD) HSDS were 9.9 (2.9) years and −2.4 (0.8), respectively. Proportion of patients with optimal adherence was 90.6% in first year (n = 436/481), 86.1% in second year (n = 341/396), and 81.1% in third year (n = 181/223). Adherence was significantly lower during summer holidays (July–August) (82.0% [n = 378/461]) than during academic year (September–June) (88.5% [n = 408/461]) (P <0.001, in patients with data available for both periods; n = 461). Mean ΔHSDS was 0.31, 0.54, 0.72, and 0.86 after 6, 12, 18, and 24 months of treatment, respectively. When initiating treatment with r-hGH at age <7 years, mean ΔHSDS was 0.33, 0.60, 0.82, and 1.01 after 6, 12, 18, and 24 months, respectively. Patients with optimal adherence exhibited higher catch-up growth, with a mean ΔHSDS at 0–12 months of 0.55 and 0.46 in optimal (n = 429) and suboptimal (n = 43) adherence groups, respectively, and at 13–24 months of 0.33 and 0.28 in optimal (n = 341) and suboptimal (n = 55) adherence groups, respectively.

Conclusion: Adherence rates to r-hGH delivered via easypod® were high and remained optimal over the first 3 years of treatment in France. Optimal treatment adherence and early initiation of treatment positively affected growth response in the first 2 years.