ESPE Abstracts

Growth response to daily GH treatment can be predicted using pre-treatment gene expression profiles.1 Once-weekly GH treatment potentially reduces the burden of daily injections2 and thus may be a major advancement in care for patients with GHD, vs standard, daily GH treatment. Here we investigate the prediction of first-year growth response based on pre-treatment blood transcriptome in children with GHD undergoing treatment with daily or once-weekly GH. ...

Background: Cardiometabolic (CM) risk is linked to being small for gestational age (SGA, birthweight <-2SDS). Fetal growth restriction (FGR) may not result in SGA. We focused on potential CM risk in children born following pregnancies at higher risk for FGR.Aims: To identify associations between fetal and childhood weight trajectory quartiles and CM risk markers. 2.To define molecular pathways potentially associated w...

Background: Children born SGA are known to develop cardiometabolic conditions in adulthood1. Nothing is known about the relationship of the transcriptome (gene expression) and epigenome (DNA methylation) to birth size and the future development of cardiometabolic disease.Aim: To identify, I) differences and functional links between epigenome age-7years, transcriptome age-9years associated and ...

Background: Current data from genome wide association studies (GWAS) explains 24.6% of the variation in adult height from 3290 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)1. Data on the genetic control of growth velocity during childhood is more limited and no previous studies have linked childhood growth to changes in the transcriptome (gene expression) or epigenome (DNA methylation). Here we present a systems biology approach to understand mid-child...

Background: Being born small for gestational age (SGA) is linked with higher systolic blood pressure (SBP). Fetuses with growth restriction (FGR) may be either SGA or appropriate size for gestational age at birth. However, it is not known which factors contributing to size at birth influence the relationship with SBP.Aim: To determine whether antenatal markers of FGR can predict the upper quartile of childhood SBP.<p...

Background: Many studies have associated being born small for gestational age (SGA) [and by implication having suboptimal fetal growth (SFG)] to childhood cardiometabolic risk markers. However, not all growth-restricted pregnancies result in SGA. In the Manchester BabyGRO study, we focussed on pregnancies at risk of SFG with most babies born AGA, and using transcriptomic and metabolomic data we have identified pathways related to higher child systolic blood pr...

Treating short stature in children born small for gestational age (SGA) requires daily growth hormone (GH) injections that are burdensome for patients and caregivers. Results from REAL5 (ongoing randomised, multinational, open-label, controlled, dose-finding phase 2 trial; NCT03878446) indicate that somapacitan (0.24 mg/kg/week) has an efficacy, safety, and tolerability profile similar to daily GH (0.067 mg/kg/day) after 52 weeks of treatment in children born SGA. Predicting G...

Responsiveness to recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) treatment in Turner syndrome (TS) is highly variable. Previous research has characterised genetic variants associated with rhGH response but these only have a minor impact. The relationship of these genetic variants to the blood transcriptome is unknown. The aim of this analysis was to relate unsupervised baseline blood transcriptome and genetic data from TS patients to their phenotype, karyotype and responsiveness to r...

The ‘Developmental Origins of Health and Disease’ (DOHaD) hypothesis encapsulates the relationship between pre- and perinatal exposures causing altered growth and the development of later life disease. Mediators of this relationship have not been fully defined. We have used zebrafish [ZF] (Danio rerio) as a potential model for DOHaD, modifying expression of grb10a, an adapter protein that interacts with the insulin and IGF receptors, to act as a negative r...