ESPE Abstracts

Background: A fair number of epidemiological studies suggest that age at menarche (AAM) is associated with depression, but the reported effect sizes are small, and there is evidence of residual confounding. Moreover, previous Mendelian randomization (MR) studies to avoid inferential problems inherent to epidemiological studies have provided mixed findings.Methods: To clarify the causal relationship between age at menarch...

Obesity—defined as excess fat mass which impacts on physical health—is a complex and multifactorial disease where numerous environmental factors (overeating and/or reduced physical activity) act in concert with genetic factors. Understanding molecular mechanisms of obesity has rapidly improved in recent years due to the development of faster, more specific genetic screening tools (1). Rare genetic obesities are distinguished from more-common polygenic obesities where...

Objective: The programmed cell death 1 protein (PD1) is a T lymphocyte membrane receptor, which when bound to its ligand PD – L1 inactivates the cytotoxic T lymphocyte, thereby down regulating the immune response. Cancer may upregulate PD – L1 on the cell surface, further downregulating the immune response. Nivolumab, a so called check point inhibitor, is a PD1 antibody, and when bound to PD1 keep the cytotoxic T lymphocyte active. Cytotoxic T lymphocyte activation b...

Aims: To describe a case of premature adrenarche with pseudohypoparathyroidism, an as yet unreported combination.Case: An otherwise well 8 year old girl presented to a Paediatric Endocrine Clinic with early pubic hair development suggestive of Premature Adrenarche. Blood tests revealed hypocalcaemia, elevated phosphate and highly elevated parathyroid hormone (PTH) level, giving a biochemical diagnosis of pseudohypoparathyroidism. She had normal stature (...

Background: Our patient, a male infant has bilateral cleft lip and palate, bilateral split hand and foot, semilobar holoprosencephaly and specific pituitary defects (cranial diabetes insipidus, gonadotrophin deficiency). He developed tumoral calcinosis at 16 months.Objective and hypotheses: Our patient’s phenotype is suggestive of Hartsfield syndrome. We hypothesise that he harbours a FGFR1 mutation given recently published findings associa...

Background: Familial growth hormone deficiency (GHD) with an autosomal dominant inheritance pattern (isolated GHD type II) due to multiple different mutations in the GH1 gene have been described.Objective and hypotheses: Describe the clinical characteristics and mutation analysis of affected individuals in a family with growth hormone deficiency inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern.Method: Medical record review.<p class="...

A ten year old girl was brought by the emergency mobile service for a persistent status epilepticus despite administration of Diazepam on site. She had presented headaches for the last three days and one episode of fever was suspected but not measured four days earlier. She had one episode of dizziness five days earlier.Persistent status epilepticus required invasive ventilation as well as deep sedation with Levetiracetam, Midazolam, ketamine, phenytoin,...

Background: Congenital hyperinsulinism (HI) is the most common cause of persistent hypoglycemia in infants and children.Objective and hypotheses: Recently, mutations in genes usually involved in MODY 1 and 3 have been described in HI.Method: We present here six cases of hyperinsulinism associated with MODY1 (one case) and MODY3 (four cases) and one case of HI associated with MODY5 mutation.Results: Case 1...

Background: Turner syndrome (TS) occurs in 1/2000 newborn girls. Primary ovarian insufficiency (POI), due to an increased follicular apoptosis, is a classic feature of TS. It occurs in more than 95% of TS patients. Therefore, oocyte donation is often the only option for women desiring a pregnancy.Objective and hypotheses: Few studies have reported the outcome of spontaneous pregnancies (SP) in TS patients.Method: We evaluated the p...

Background: In the last decades a rapid increase in the incidence of childhood type I diabetes (TIDM) has been reported worldwide. To stop the progressively advancing process immunosuppressive and nutritional trials have been made, but failed. Epidemiological studies by our group performed in several countries have shown that the season during which children who developed TIDM were born differed from that in the general population; suggesting that the initial trigger for TIDM ...