ESPE Abstracts

Background: Over the last decade, and in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a substantial increase in the use of digital health tools to track growth and manage growth disorders in children. Paediatric endocrinologists acknowledge the usefulness of these tools in clinical decision making but lack confidence and skills to use them. Atique et al. designed a Massive Open Online Learning Course (MOOC) to increase digital health literacy, and identified...

Background: Monitoring adherence to growth hormone (GH) treatment is important, because poor adherence can lead to suboptimal clinical outcomes. The easypod™ electromechanical injection device in combination with the web-based easypod™ connect platform electronically records and transmits accurate, objective records of the date, time and dose injected of patients receiving GH with growth disorders, allowing physicians to accurately monitor patients&#...

Background: Poor adherence to recombinant human growth hormone (r-hGH) treatment presents a significant barrier to achieving optimal growth outcomes. It is important to identify and address the treatment adherence-related needs of children prescribed r-hGH, and develop new approaches to improve adherence. In this study, we aimed to measure the impact of the TuiTek patient support programme, a multi-component personalised service intervention, on caregivers&#14...

Background: Treatment of growth hormone deficiency (GHD) requires daily injections over many years. Connected digital health devices can facilitate GH treatment by automating the injection process, which reduces anxiety, and collecting injection data in real-time so that accurate adherence information is available to healthcare professionals (HCPs). In developing new digital health solutions, HCP perspectives should be considered.<strong...

Background: Digital health solutions, such as the Growzen™ buddy smartphone application (app), can facilitate adherence to recombinant human growth hormone (r-hGH) treatment for patients with growth disorders. The app alerts patients when it’s time for an injection and allows patients and their caregivers to self-monitor growth, to build a routine and improve adherence. The app also contains educational resources to empower patients to be active in...

Background: Long-term treatment with recombinant human growth hormone (r-hGH) is often challenging for children and adolescents, their caregivers and healthcare professionals (HCPs), as treatment requires daily injections over several years. Connected digital health devices facilitate this by automating the injection process to improve comfort, reduce anxiety and collect GH treatment data so that accurate adherence information is available to HCPs in real-time...

Objectives: Diabetes mellitus (DM) as part of autoimmune dysregulation syndromes holds a unique place among DM monogenic forms. Early diagnosis of the disease is critical for pathogenetic therapy to be prescribed. We describe a clinical case of insulin-dependent DM in combination with severe autoimmune enteropathy in a young patient who had a novel compound heterozygous mutation in the LRBA gene.Methods: The patient unde...

Background: Silver Russell Syndrome (SRS) is characterized by pre- and postnatal growth failure, relative macrocephaly at birth, prominent forehead, feeding difficulties and body asymmetry. The diagnosis is clinical, the genetic mechanisms involved are different, in 50% of cases loss of methylation (LOM) at the paternal H19/IGF2:IG-DMR (chr11p15.5), in 10% of cases maternal uniparental disomy of chromosome 7 (UPD(7)mat), cases of maternal uniparental ...

Background: Children with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) have an increased risk of developing optic pathway gliomas (OPGs) during childhood. Although these tumors usually have a benign course, some cases result in significant clinical symptoms, including endocrinological disorders.Objective and hypotheses: The aim of this study is to evaluate the endocrinological complications of OPGs involving the chiasm in children with NF1.Metho...

Background: Thyroid dysfunction is a well-known endocrine complication after cervical irradiation for Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL). The most common are primary hypothyroidism (20–30%), central hypothyroidism, transient thyroiditis and thyroid cancer. Graves’ disease (GD) is less frequent (5%).Objective and hypotheses: We describe a boy, already diagnosed with thyroiditis, who developed GD during follow-up for severe hypothyroidism following rad...