ESPE Abstracts

Background: Hypophosphatasia (HPP) is an inherited multisystem disorder predominantly affecting the mineralization of bones and teeth. HPP is caused by pathogenic variants in ALPL, which encodes tissue non-specific alkaline phosphatase. A major challenge in diagnosing HPP is interpreting variants in ALPL classified as variants of uncertain significance (VUS) according to ACMG/AMP criteria, creating uncertainty in patients and treating physicians resulting in d...

Background: Late initiation of GH results in suboptimal adult height for many women with TS. In a landmark, randomized, controlled, clinical trial (“Toddler Turner” study) we showed that 2 y of early GH (ET group) started at 1.98±1.01 y, resulted in height SDS difference of 1.6±0.6 SDS vs. early untreated group (EUT).Objective and hypotheses: It was unclear if early height gains would result in taller adult heights, so patients were f...

Background: Human scalp hair is a valuable matrix for determining long-term cortisol concentrations, with wide-spread applicability in clinical care as well as research. However, pediatric reference intervals are lacking.The aim of this study is to establish age-adjusted reference intervals for hair cortisol in children aged 0-18 years and to gain insight into hair-growth velocity in children up to 2 years old.Methods: A...

Pediatric severe obesity is a major threat to health and longevity. Around 7% of children worldwide have early onset severe obesity before the age of 7. Pediatric obesity is caused by an interplay of multiple factors: lifestyle, environmental, sociocultural, psychological, biological and genetic factors. Endocrine, monogenetic or syndromal causes are rare, but currently underdiagnosed and important to identify for the need of specific treatment. Cardiovascular risk factors and...

Introduction: Growth hormone (GH) treatment is essential for growth in children with GH deficiency. Also short children born small for gestational age (SGA), and children with syndromes like Turner Syndrome (TS), Noonan Syndrome (NS) and Silver Russel Syndrome (SRS) can benefit from GH treatment. For children with needle anxiety GH delivered by a jet device can be a solution for the daily subcutaneous treatment for many years. In 2021, a global recall of the o...

Introduction: Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, the European Registries For Rare Endocrine Conditions (EuRRECa), which is a collaboration between Endo-ERN, ESPE and ESE provided the possibility for registration of cases. Obesity is a risk factor for severe COVID-19 disease course in adults. In children and adolescents, COVID-19 disease course is much milder, but has also been identified as risk factor. As rare genetic obesity disorde...

Background: Phthalates are ubiquitous environmental contaminants and endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Nowadays, they are considered reproductive toxicants and in-utero exposure is well documented, although evidence of early life exposure is scarce, and needs to be described. Aim of this study is to assess phthalate exposure and its changes over the first months of life in a cohort of healthy full term infants and their mothers from a restricted area of t...

Background: The activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis during the first months both in males(M) and females(F) is named as minipuberty. Urinary gonadotropins (uGn) represent an unexpensive and non-invasive method of assessing pubertal development and they have recently been used also for studying minipuberty.Aims of the study are: 1) to describe the urinary hormonal pattern (uLH, uFSH, testosterone – uT, oestra...

Background: Biallelic loss of function (LoF) mutations in the leptin receptor gene (LEPR) cause a striking phenotype of early-onset severe obesity and hyperphagia. Additionally, hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, growth hormone deficiency, and/or hypothyroidism are often present. Currently, 19 European patients (all aged <30 years) are described in literature. As clinical trials investigating MC4R-agonist treatment are performed throughout Europe, ide...

Background: Patients with 45,X/46,XY mixed gonadal dysgenesis (MGD) have variable phenotypes leading to both male and female sex assignments. A multidisciplinary team should guide the process of sex assignment, however a standardized approach may provide objective guidance for the team as well as a tool for settings without such resources. One of the most important considerations for sex assignment is the hormonal production, which often determines the degree of virilization. ...