ESPE Abstracts

Background: Steroid 11-β hydroxylase deficiency is the second most frequent cause of adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) with autosomal recessive inheritance. Girls have importantly virilized external genitalia at birth, and boys display precocious pseudopuberty. Unlike others enzymatic deficiency involved in CAH, there is no salt wasting during infancy but patients develop hypertension. Because of more than 90% of homologous sequence between CYP11B1 gene ...

Background and Aims: Central Precocious Puberty (CPP) caused by the early activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis is a rare affection that occurs in 0.2% in girls. Clinical signs are suggestive and LHRH-test could be sometimes difficult to use and not always contributive. Gonadotropin assay in twenty-four hours-urinary collection could be an interesting option. The present work intended to evaluate the diagnostic interest of 24-hour urinary gonad...

Background: Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), resulting from mutations in CYP11B1 (gene encoding 11β-hydroxylase), is a rare autosomal recessive disorder due to an impairment of the last steroidogenesis step. Consequences are a decreased cortisol secretion, elevated plasma levels of ACTH, and accumulation of steroid precursors responsible of hyperandrogenism and hypertension. It is the second most frequent cause of CAH after 21-Hydroxylase de...

The use of recombinant adeno-associated viruses (rAAV) as safe vectors have allowed hundreds of gene therapy attempts to treat monogenic diseases not including bone genetic diseases (Gao G, Nat Rev Drug Dis 2019). To our knowledge, there has been few attempts to apply gene therapy to monogenic bone diseases, largely because most skeletal malformations are being developed during fetal life. Patients affected with acrodysostosis are known to aggravate their skeletal malformation...

Introduction: Estrogens play an essential role in reproduction and their peripheral action is mediated via nuclear alfa and beta receptors (ER) as well as membrane receptors. To date, only 3 females and 2 males from 3 families with a loss of function of ERa have been reported. The phenotype in these families was strongly suggestive of an estrogen resistance with an absence of a complete puberty, a delay in epiphyseal maturation with high estradiol levels and e...

Background: CNS tumours are the most frequent solid tumours in children. In pediatric gliomas, IGF1R nuclear localization was significantly associated with both high grade tumours and increased risk of death and contributed to the aggressive phenotype of glioblastoma by increasing motility and metabolism of tumour cells rather than increasing its proliferation. For children chemotherapy after surgical resection is the mainstay of therapy. However, the best reg...

Background and Aim: Gliomas are the most frequent solid tumors in pediatric population. The IGF system of ligands and receptors are known to play an important role in both normal and neoplastic growth. In a previous work we have reported the quantitation of some components of the IGFs system in SNC pediatric tumours (IGF-1, IGF-2, IGF-1R, IR), being IGF-2 expression the most variable among all the genes studied.Our aim w...

Introduction: Resistance to thyroid hormone alpha (RTHα) is characterised by tissue-specific hypothyroidism associated with barely normal thyroid function tests. Clinical features include dysmorphic facies, skeletal dysplasia, growth retardation, constipation, dyspraxia and intellectual deficit. Hormonal assessment often shows decreased/low-normal free thyroxine (fT4) and increased/high-normal free triiodothyronine (fT3) concentrations, resulting in a low...

Introduction: Bardet-Biedl syndrome is a rare autosomal recessive disease, characterized by rod-cone dystrophy, truncal obesity, left foot polydactyly, cognitive impairment, male hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism, female genitourinary malformations, and renal abnormalities. The authors present 3 cases of Bardet-Biedl syndrome diagnosed during pediatric age.Case description: Case1: A 3-year-old girl with a f...

Background: Solidarity-based healthcare systems face significant challenges due to the rising costs of new and highly expensive medicines for cancer and rare diseases. The Dutch government introduced the Coverage Lock (CL) policy in 2015 to restrict access to reimbursement for such drugs. The CL has raised controversy around its ethical acceptability. Some claim the CL is necessary to secure solidarity while others have pointed out that its leads to unfair ine...