ESPE Abstracts

Background and Objective: Obesity is known to affect pubertal timing. However, existing data are still controversial, observing either delayed or accelerated pubertal onset, especially among boys. Herein, we evaluated pubertal milestones and underlying hormonal changes between lean and obese children.Material and Methods: We examined 13,484 events from 4,855 lean (BMI SDS <1.28) and 1,983 obese (BMI SDS > 1.88) c...

Background: The leptin signaling cascade is a crucial regulator of satiety and energy homeostasis in the hypothalamus, comprising extracellular leptin binding to its receptor, phosphorylation and nuclear translocation of STAT3 (signal transducer and activator of transcription 3) and consecutively the generation of a central satiety signal via neuropeptide secretion. We identified three variants in the extracellular domains of the LEPR gene in two children with severe ...

Background: The course of type 2 diabetes is more severe among children with obesity than among adults. Therefore, children at high risk for glycemic deterioration should be detected early enough to guide preventive (and interventional) clinical management.Methods: We established age- and puberty-specific reference values for 7 different indexes addressing the insulin response during oral glucose tolerance testing upon 4...

Here we identified and characterized a heterozygous tandem duplication at the ASIP (agouti-signaling protein) gene locus causing ubiquitous, ectopic ASIP expression in a female index patient with extreme childhood obesity. In patient-derived adipose tissue samples, we observed pronounced differentiation of stroma-vascular fraction (SVF) cells into adipocytes in the patient compared to normal control cells. We further found reduced mitochondrial maximum respir...