ESPE Abstracts

Background: Delayed puberty (DP) is generally considered a benign condition. We investigated the diagnoses underlying DP and its outcome predictors.Objective: A retrospective chart review which included clinical and biochemical data of 174 boys and 70 girls evaluated for DP in a single tertiary care center between 2004 and 2014.Results: Thirty etiologies that underlie DP were identified. No markers of clinical value could be identi...

Background: The frequency of makorin RING-finger protein 3 gene (MKRN3) mutations in Finnish patients with precocious puberty (PP) is not known. As a first step to investigate this, we describe the diagnoses underlying PP in a single academic center.Objective and hypotheses: To review the diagnoses in children who were presented with signs of PP (adrenarche excluded) at the Helsinki University Hospital, with a special emphasis on the identification of fa...

Objectives: We designed a longitudinal study to investigate the association between central pubertal activation with age at the appearance of clinical signs of puberty. We, therefore, assessed nocturnal gonadotropin secretion which can be detected in the form of total luteinizing hormone (LH) immunoreactivity in the daytime- and sleeptime-excreted urine.Methods: Thirty healthy volunteers (17 boys and 13 girls, aged 3.4&n...

Objectives: We explored the alternative of using overnight fold change in gonadotropin levels by comparing the last-night-voided and first-morning-voided urine concentrations of luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) as a conceptual analogy to the invasive gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) stimulation test setting.Methods: We investigated the nocturnal changes in the immunoreactivity levels o...

Background: Based on growth screening rules, severe short stature (i.e. height SDS less than -3), at the age of more than 3 years, warrants diagnostic evaluation in specialized health care. In the absence of apparent underlying cause, targeted and eventually untargeted genetic studies have been proposed. However, the etiology of short stature at the severe end of the spectrum is poorly characterized.Methods: We ...

Background: We describe the incidence, etiologies and clinical features of combined pituitary hormone deficiency (CPHD) in pediatric patients from a single tertiary center.Methods: The cohort comprised of patients with CPHD, treated in the Helsinki University Hospital between 1985 and 2018. They were identified through an ICD-9/ICD-10 code search, and the clinical data were recorded from the patient charts.<p class="...

Background: Little is known about the burden of disease, as evaluated by health related quality of life (HRQoL), in patients with congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (CHH). We characterized the (HRQoL) in a relatively large and well-characterized population of patients with CHH using the 15D, a comprehensive preference-based generic instrument in sampling dimensions for the construct of HRQoL. 15D covers most of the ‘domains of health’ emphasized in the WHO Inte...

Background: Congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (CHH) provides a model to study the impact of sex steroid deficiency on childhood growth.Aims and objectives: We characterised growth patterns in male CHH patients with special emphasis on growth during the minipuberty of infancy.Methods: Growth charts of 38 men with CHH (28 from Finland and 10 from Denmark) were evaluated. Fifteen (39%) patients had representative length measure...

Background: Most comprehensive guidelines on tall stature suggest that extremely tall children (defined as height above +3 SDS) should be referred to specialized health care for comprehensive diagnostic work-up. However, currently the etiology of tall stature is poorly characterized and no systematic studies focusing on extreme tall stature exist.Methods: We identified all subjects with height above +3 SDS after the age ...

Objective: The influence of androgens and estrogens on growth is complex, and understanding their relative roles is important for optimizing the treatment of children with various disorders of growth and puberty.Design: We examined the proportional roles of androgens and estrogens in the regulation of pubertal growth in boys with constitutional delay of growth and puberty (CDGP). The study compared 6-month low-dose intramuscular testoste...