ESPE Abstracts

Childhood obesity has become a major health issue in the last decades. Moreover, identifying a simple, feasible, and valid screening tool to select subjects at higher risk for obesity-related comorbidities has become a challenge. Current guidelines reccommend to use BMI percentile for overweight and obesity diagnosis. However, waist-to-height ratio (WHR) has been associated with the risk of metabolic derangement in children and adolescents with overweight and obesity. In addit...

Background: Menarche is a significant event in the reproductive life of a woman and represents the late event in puberty indicating that a sexually immature child has become reproductively capable. Even though the timing of puberty onset is approximately conserved in different populations, the puberty starts across a wide range of ages in normal girls. However, in the last decades we are observing that girls are experiencing earlier breast development and earlier menarche, als...

Background: A close association has been reported between obesity and renal damage in adults, but evidence in childhood is still limited.Methods: We retrospectively studied 396 children and adolescents with obesity. Clinical, biochemical, and instrumental evaluations were performed. Patients were stratified according to the metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) and metabolically unhealthy obesity (MUO) phenotypes. Kidney d...

Purpose: The main purpose of the study is to assess the association between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and insulin secretion in children with obesity.Objectives: To achieve our aim we have assessed OSA and measured insulin secretion by the using the oral minimal model (OMM) in a cohort of 77 obese children and adolescents.Methods: We retrospectively enrolled children and adolesc...

Background: The N-acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) A803G polymorphism leading to substitution of lysine to arginine at residue 268 and codifying for a cytosolic enzyme catalysing acetyl-CoA-dependent N- and O-acetylation reactions, has been associated with decreased insulin sensitivity in a large adult population with the A allele associated with insulin resistance (IR)-related traits.Objective and hypotheses: We screened for this polymorphism, for th...

Background: Studies examining vitamin D levels in association with childhood obesity usually do not concurrently measure levels of vitamin D-binding protein and do not calculate the unbound, bioavailable vitamin D, that is considered the fraction of 25-hydroxyvitamin D able to exert biological activity.Objective and hypotheses: To evaluate in a group of children for the most part obese i) the concentrations of both total 25-hydroxyvitamin D and of the bi...

Background: The patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein 3 (PNPLA3) I148M and the transmembrane 6 superfamily member 2 (TM6SF2) E167K polymorphisms have been recognized as the major risk polymorphisms for Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). Data supported a close relationship of NAFLD with thyroid function both in adults and children. To investigate the influence of NAFLD and of its genetics on thyroid function.<p class...

Purpose: Leptin plays a key role in the regulation of body weight and other endocrine systems. Recently, impairment of leptin gene transcription due to genetic variations in a long-noncoding RNA, also referred as lncOb, has been described in mice. In humans, a correspondent polymorphism (rs10487505) has been associated with relatively low plasmatic leptin levels compared to obesity severity and with early obesity onset.Objectives...

Background: The patatin like phospholipase containing domain 3 (PNPLA3) I148M polymorphism has an effect on modulation of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) in non-obese non-diabetic adults and in children with histologically confirmed Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).Objectives: To explored the impact of PNPLA3 I148M polymorphism on eGFR in obese children with and without NAFLD.<p class="a...

Background: In infants under 3 years of age acquired primary hypothyroidism caused by autoimmune thyroiditis is very rare. Hypothyroidism can manifest with different signs and symptoms and has a wide range of presentations from subclinical hypothyroidism to overt form.Objective and hypotheses: We describe a child with an unusual hypothyroidism presentation characterized by multi-organ involvement and related to acquired autoimmune thyroiditis during a ve...