ESPE Abstracts

Background: Aromatase excess syndrome (AEXS) (OMIM 139300) is a rare condition characterized with gynecomastia in boys and macromastia in girls. Estrogen excess in boys can lead to prepubertal and pubertal gynecomastia, bone age progression and short adult stature. While most of girls are usually asymptomatic, there are few reported female patients with excessive breast growth, early puberty, menstrual irregularities, and short adult stature. Male and female children with AEXS...

Background: Diseases of sex development (DSD) are rare heterogeneous disorders ranging from infertility (an estimated 15% of couples worldwide have difficulty conceiving), to severe cases including ambiguous genitalia, sex reversal, and gonadal dysgenesis. The genetic basis of DSD remains unknown in 50% of the severe cases. To identify novel genetic causes of DSD, we are investigating patients in which known causative genes have been excluded. Identifying new ...

Inactivating mutations of ß-cell KATP channels cause the most common and severe form of congenital hyperinsulinism (HI), a ß-cell disorder that results in dysregulated insulin secretion and persistent hypoglycemia. Children with KATPHI are typically unresponsive to diazoxide, the only FDA-approved drug for HI. Octreotide, an SST2-selective agonist peptide that inhibits insulin secretion, is used as second line therapy, but poor efficacy and SST2...

Obesity presents a major worldwide challenge, due to its numerous, severe adverse effects on health. This leads to a necessity to further investigate the mechanisms underlying lipid accumulation. The adipocytokine leptin may contribute to this process. While there already has been thorough research into central leptin action, deepening our understanding of leptin’s effects on whole-body energy homeostasis, relatively little is known about its auto- and paracrine effects....

Background: Mesoderm-specific transcript (MEST) is an epoxide α/β-hydrolase protein with catalytic activity that is determinant for the development of adipocytes. The MEST gene is an imprinted gene transcribed only from the paternal allele. Although the mechanism by which MEST overexpression augments fat accumulation and storage in adipocytes has not been fully elucidated, frequent subcellular contacts between MEST-positive endoplasmic reticulum, mi...

Background: The new adipokine/myokine meteorin-like (Metrnl) has been proposed to be of interest for obesity and metabolic disease through its potential role for brown/beige fat thermogenesis and macrophage activation in mice. METRNL was reported to be expressed in white adipose tissue (AT) and upregulated during adipogenesis and by exercise and.Aims: In this study we analysed the expression of METRNL during human adipogenesis and its regulation...

Background: Research has demonstrated that technologies to support diabetes self-management for people living with diabetes can have positive effects on medical and quality of life outcomes. It also shows that there may be an additional burden of wearing and using these technologies. Both diabetes and its treatment can have significant deleterious effect on quality of life, thus it is crucial that the interaction between the technology and the user offers maximum benefit with ...

Background: Recent work revealed two pathways in androgen biosynthesis, namely the classic and an alternative, the backdoor pathway. In this alternative pathway dihydrotestosterone is produced from 17-hydroxyprogesterone without the intermediacy of testosterone using mostly enzymes that are specific to the backdoor path. In the human ovary, regulation of androgen production plays a crucial role in normal physiology and in pathologies such as the polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS...

Background: Synthetic glucocorticoids (GCs) are widely used drugs but their suppression of growth in pediatric patients is a well-known problem. Different mechanisms have been suggested but we still do not know the sensitivity of human growth plate cartilage to GC treatment. Here in this study, we have investigated the direct effects of GC treatment on the expression of crucial genes in the growth plate, such as collagen-2A1, osterix (Osx), and transforming growth factor &#946...

Liquid chromatography associated with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is currently considered the gold standard for steroid measurement. The aim of this study was to compare traditional immunoassay and LC-MS/MS methods for androgens measurement before and after human recombinant chorionic gonadotrophin (hrCG) stimulation in children with diagnosis of disorder of sex development (DSD) with 46,XY karyotype and past of normal testosterone secretion. We evaluated 19 patients, ...