ESPE Abstracts

Background: Turner syndrome (TS) affects 1:2,500 females and results from complete or partial loss of one of the X chromosomes. Typical traits associated with TS include short stature, primary ovarian insufficiency (POI), autoimmune diseases, and cardiovascular and endocrine disorders. Long-term follow-up is needed from the time of presentation into adult life. Several genetic mechanisms have been proposed to account for the development of TS-associated featur...

Background: The presentation of early-onset Primary Ovarian Insufficiency (EO-POI), most often with primary amenorrhea, is at one end of a spectrum spanning 40 years. The aetiology of POI is frequently unclear but next generation sequencing of varied age groups has identified several associated genetic variants. Whether girls with EO-POI are more likely to have a genetic aetiology than those with later presentations remains unknown.<stro...

Background: Primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) is genetically mediated in up to 30% of cases. Many genes associated with POI have roles in early ovary developmental processes, including meiosis.Objectives: We investigated the genetic mechanism underlying early-onset POI in three young women presenting with absent puberty: two sisters from a consanguineous pedigree and a third unrelated proband.<st...

The human adrenal cortex produces a wide range of steroids that includes aldosterone, cortisol and a variety of 19 carbon (C19) steroids; the most studied being DHEA. In humans, adrenarche is the endocrine developmental process manifested by an increased adrenal output of DHEA. This phenomenon corresponds with the expansion of the zona reticularis of the adrenal gland. However, the physiological mechanisms that trigger adrenarche remain elusive. Our research focuses...

Patients with Disorders of sex development (DSD) can present with a large phenotypic spectrum and caused by a number of different genetic defects. Therefore, it is difficult to reach a specific diagnosis using traditional approaches including biochemical analysis and single gene sequencing in a number of patients with DSD. Recently, next-generation sequencing technologies have revolutionized the identification of causative genes with diseases with genetic heterogeneity using m...

Prior to the clinical and commercial introduction of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) by sequencing of maternal plasma cell-free DNA in 2011, most fetuses with Turner syndrome were detected by sonographic findings related to lymphedema or incidentally. NIPT, however, has transformed prenatal genetic screening, and an estimated 4–6 million tests have been performed worldwide. In the maternal plasma sample there is both maternal and placental cell-free DNA. Following a s...

Background: Disproportional short stature (DSS) is the most frequent clinical presentation of skeletal dysplasias, which are a heterogeneous group of more than 450 disorders of bone. Skeletal survey is important to establish the diagnosis and to guide the genetic test, but has several limitations, especially in mild and atypical cases.Objective and hypotheses: To identify the genetic aetiology of DSS by exome sequencing.Method: Who...

Introduction: McCune-Albright Syndrome (MAS) is a rare congenital disorder caused by post-zygotic activating mutations in GNAS gene. Due to the mosaic pattern of this disease, mutation abundance is frequently low in several tissues, including blood cells. The emergence of next-generation sequencing (NGS) methodologies has allowed the analysis of millions of DNA fragments simultaneously and independently, enabling detection of low mutation abundance. Aim: To es...

Background: Turner syndrome (TS) arises from a complete or partial loss of one X chromosome (45,X) and is the most common genetic cause of primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) in women. Surprisingly little is understood about the pathogenesis of POI in TS beyond an acknowledged germ cell loss throughout the second trimester. Although X chromosome haploinsufficiency likely contributes, the variability in reproductive phenotype in 45,X TS suggests it is not the o...

Background: In the past few years, new genes involved with familial predisposition to pituitary tumour development have been recognised, including AIP and SDHx. These factors are likely to underestimate the occurrence of familial pituitary tumour predisposition, commonly thought to account for 5% of all pituitary tumours. Furthermore, the clinical management of aggressive pituitary tumours is challenging, particularly when tumours exhibit resistance to standa...