ESPE Abstracts

Schaaf-Yang syndrome (SYS) is a genetic disorder caused by truncating pathogenic variants in the paternal allele of the maternally imprinted, paternally expressed gene MAGEL2, located in the Prader-Willi critical region 15q11-15q13. SYS is a neurodevelopmental disorder that has clinical overlap with Prader-Willi Syndrome in the initial stages of life, being the intellectual disability, developmental delay, autism spectrum disorder, neonatal hypotonia, infantile feeding problem...

Introduction: The human adrenal gland originates from the adrenogonadal primordium at around 4 weeks post conception (wpc) and undergoes marked developmental changes throughout the first half of pregnancy. Several key aspects of adrenal maturation are well-established, such as the formation of a large inner fetal zone (FZ) and synthesis of dehydroepiandrosterone, but many other processes contributing to adrenal gland development and function in humans are stil...

Introduction: Ovary development was once considered a largely passive process. RNA sequencing (RNAseq) approaches have allowed us to begin to characterise ovary development in previously unparalleled detail, revealing the process to be complex and, still, little understood. A challenge is synthesising and using these data to advance our understanding of clinical disease. Through a clinically-focused lens, we elucidate novel aspects of the transcriptional lands...

The ongoing European LIFE-MILCH project(www.lifemilch.eu), focuses on detecting Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in mothers, in breast and formula milk and in urine of mothers and infants up to 12 months of age studying relationships with neurodevelopment, growth, distribution of adiposity, pubertal stages to establish a risk assessment model to prepare safety guidelines. In this study we have evaluated the effects of maternal diet during and after pregnancy, and of duration of ...

The ongoing European LIFE-MILCH project (www.lifemilch.eu), focuses on detecting Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in mothers, in breast and formula milk and in urine of mothers and infants up to 12 months of age studying relationships with neurodevelopment, growth, distribution of adiposity, pubertal stages, and ano-genital distance (AGD) to establish a risk assessment model to prepare safety guidelines. In this study we evaluated the effects of maternal diet during and after pr...

Background: Among children with idiopathic short stature, Italian data reported a prevalence of short stature homeobox-containing gene (SHOX) deficiency disorders (SHOX-D) near to 1/1.000-2.000 (1.1-15%) with a wide phenotypic spectrum. Current guidelines support recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) therapy in SHOX-D children, but long-term data are still lacking. This national survey aims to evaluate long-term efficacy and safety of rhGH therapy in Italian...

Background: The peptides obestatin and adropin are thought to regulate glucose and lipid metabolism, weight gain, and fluid intake in adults. The roles of obestatin and adropin in the regulation of weight and glucose and lipid metabolism in Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) and non-syndromic pediatric obesity are poorly understood. This study compares the concentrations of obestatin and adropin in infants and children with PWS and age- and BMI-z matched controls, and explores the as...

Background: Caregivers of patients with Bardet Biedl syndrome (BBS) face substantial burden from highly prevalent features of the disease, namely hyperphagia, or uncontrollable hunger, and obesity. However, the burden experienced by caregivers of individuals with BBS is not well characterized.Methods: A multicountry cross-sectional survey of caregivers of individuals with BBS was conducted to quantify the burden experien...

Background: Hyperphagia, or pathologic insatiable hunger, and early-onset obesity are prevalent clinical features of Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS), a rare genetic disorder. While hyperphagia and obesity have broad impacts on individuals with BBS and their caregivers, the extent of this burden is not well characterized.Methods: This multicountry cross-sectional survey of caregivers of individuals with BBS was conducted to q...

ERF protein is a major binding target of ERK1/2 kinases, key effectors of the RAS–MEK–ERK signaling cascade. ERF has a role as a negative transcriptional regulator of RAS/MAPK mitogenic pathway (1) and, in theory, a loss-of-function mutation (LOF) in ERF could cause a Rasopathy phenotype. To date, LOF variants of ERF have been reported in 45 individuals with craniosynostosis but without a Noonan-like phenotype. There is only one case report describing a patient wit...