ESPE Abstracts

Background: Leprechaunism, also known as Donohue syndrome, is due to a severe congenital insulin-resistance, with prenatal and neonatal growth retardation, typical dysmorphic features, glycaemic dysregulation with hyperinsulinism and hyperandrogenism.Objective and hypotheses: These patients have a poor prognosis with death in the first year of life.Method: We report the case of a newborn (35.4 weeks) with severe fetal growth restri...

Background: The syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis (SIAD) is one of the most common causes of hyponatremia: it’s a disorder of sodium and water balance, characterized by urinary dilution impairment and hypotonic hyponatremia, in the absence of renal disease or any non-osmotic stimulus, able to induce antidiuretic hormone (ADH) release. SIAD can be manifestation of a wide range of diseases, including cancer, head trauma, hydrocephalus and epilepsy. Usually transient an...

Background: Central precocious puberty (CPP) is often familial but its genetic cause is largely unknown. Very recently, the makorin RING finger protein 3 (MKRN3) gene, located on chromosome 15 in the Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS)-associated region (15q11-q13), has been found mutated for the first time in five families with familial precocious puberty, with a peculiar kind of transmission. In fact, it is an imprinted gene which is expressed only if transmitted from the father. Th...

Background: Dominantly acting loss-of-function mutations in the ABCC8 gene, encoding the sulfonylurea receptor 1 (SUR1) subunit of the β-cell potassium channel (KATP), are usually responsible for mild diazoxide-responsive congenital hyperinsulinism (CHI). In rare cases dominant ABCC8 mutations can cause diffuse diazoxide-unresponsive CHI. Recent reports suggest that medically responsive CHI due to a dominant ABCC8 mutation may confer an increase...

Background: MKNR3 is a paternally expressed gene whose loss-of-function mutations cause Central precocious puberty (CPP). The precise molecular disruption produced by MKRN3 mutations remains unclear albeit protein structure suggests MKRN3 could play a role in proteasome ubiquitination. Circulating MKRN3 levels has been negatively associated to LH peak, estradiol and kisspeptin in idiopathic CPP and healthy controls. However, no literature data is available for...

A 5-year old boy was referred to our clinic for short stature reported since first years of life. At birth weight and length were normal, psychomotor development was regular, target height was 165.9 cm. At 7 months of life he was subjected to correction of cleft lip-palate. Since 3 years of life he suffered from headache, for which a fundoscopy was performed and revealed a Morning Glory Disc Anomaly (MGDA) of the right eye. At our first visit height was 98.2 cm (-2.5DS), body ...

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...

Objectives: To describe the patients with gender non-conforming referred to a pediatric medical center after creation of the multidisciplinary team "APEVAGE" (Ambulatorio Pediatrico per la Varianza di Genere, Pediatric Clinic for Gender Variance) composed by pediatric endocrinologist, psychologist and child psychiatrist at Institute for Maternal and Child Health "Burlo Garofolo" in Trieste. It is one of the 8 centers recognized by ONIG (Osserva...

Background: Recently, mutations of makorin RING-finger protein 3 (MKRN3) have been identified in familial central precocious puberty (CPP). Serum levels of this protein decline before the pubertal onset in healthy girls and boys and are lower in patients with CPP compared to prepubertal matched pairs. The aim of the study is to investigate longitudinal changes in MKRN3 circulating levels in patients with CPP before and during GnRHa treatment.Me...

Background: Central precocious puberty (CPP) is often familial but its genetic cause is largely unknown. Very recently, the makorin RING finger protein 3 (MKRN3) gene has been found mutated for the first time in 5 families with familial precocious puberty. The inheritance pattern is particular being the MKRN3 a maternal imprinted gene. Moreover in a recent genome wide association study common intronic or intragenic variants harbouring this gene and other two imprinted genes, D...