ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Body composition analysis is a painless, bloodless and highly informative method of assessing health indicators that can be used extensively in the pediatric population. This is particularly important granted that the prevalence of childhood obesity has been increasing at a fast pace worldwide. Increased adiposity in children and adolescents is an important issue for children’s growth and psychologic development. Assessing the psychosocial status of children...

Introduction: Increased adiposity has been associated with smoldering systemic inflammation and metabolic syndrome manifestations, leading to further morbidity by increasing the risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease in adults. Similar analyses have not been performed systematically in children and adolescents.Hypothesis: This study investigates the interrelations between body composition parameters and indices of inflammation and m...

Background: Chronic stress and increased adiposity have been associated with each other in children. Further studies are needed, however, to evaluate both the directionality of this association and the mediating metabolic mechanisms.Objective and hypotheses: This study investigates the interrelations between BMI, body composition parameters, indices of the stress response, such as hair and salivary cortisol levels, and, metabolic mediators, such as insul...

Objectives: Survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (cALL) present elevated fracture rates compared to the general population. A polygenic risk score for estimated bone mineral density (BMD), named gSOS, validated to predict the risk of adult osteoporotic fracture, has been previously associated with significant fracture risk in childhood. We hypothesized that gSOS could be associated with long-term, bone health-related mobidities in survivors of c...

Background: The Spexin gene is considered the most dysregulated in obese human fat with an almost complete absence of expression in obese human fat in comparison with non-obese fat tissues. Limited data from human and animal studies suggest that the novel peptide spexin may potentially impact food intake, weight regulation and body adiposity.Objective: The aim of this study was to compare serum spexin concentrations betw...

Background: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays a role in the central regulation of energy balance and has been associated with body mass index (BMI).Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate potential differences in serum BDNF concentrations in adolescents by gender and BMI, as well as possible correlations of circulating BDNF with the adolescents’ characteristics of metabolic syndrome.Methods: Study part...

Background: Spexin is a novel hormone that may potentially impact food intake, weight regulation and body adiposity. Circulating spexin has been associated with obesity and insulin resistance indices in women.Objective: The aim of this study was to determine serum spexin concentrations in adolescent females with metabolic syndrome, with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), with anorexia nervosa as well as in healthy controls, and explore possible relationsh...

Background: Physical activity is beneficial to lipid profiles, however the association between sedentary behaviours and paediatric dyslipidaemia remains controversial. Understanding these associations is critical given that youth are increasingly engaging in sedentary pursuits, and are sleeping, on average, 1 h less than children were 20 years ago.Objective and hypotheses: To investigate whether various forms of sedentary behavior/sleep predict lipid pro...

Background: Fractures are common in children, but a significant fracture history, defined as low-trauma vertebral fractures or multiple long bone fractures, is rare. Children with such history and no osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) are often presumed to have another Mendelian disease. However, in adults, multiple common risk alleles of small effect influence risk of fracture. We tested if subjects with a significant childhood fracture history have an increased bu...

Background: The term Congenital Hypothyroidism (CH) describes children with subnormal thyroid hormone levels present at birth. According to literature, CH has an incidence of ~1:1500–1:3000 births with a clear predominance of females (female:male ratio 2:1) and is mainly caused by thyroid dysgenesis (80%). Low FT4 levels have been used as important criteria for CH diagnosis and treatment initiation. The Greek neonatal CH screening program has followed the TSH cut-off lowe...