ESPE Abstracts

Context: Children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and adrenal insufficiency (AI) require hydrocortisone replacement from birth. Continuous monitoring of therapy during growth is necessary. Until now, children were dependent on off label use with divided hydrocortisone tablets or pharmacy compounded capsules. A licensed paediatric formulation that allows accurate dosing down to 0.5mg is now available.Objective: ...

Background: Recurrent miscarriage (RM) is traditionally described as three or more consecutive pregnancy losses and remains a challenging condition, affecting 1-3% of couples trying to conceive. Although factors such as uterine abnormalities, maternal hypothyroidism and parental balanced translocations are associated with RM, in most situations the aetiology is unknown. The coexistence of RM and live births in many families suggests a potential association wit...

Introduction: Age at pubertal onset is a markedly inherited trait. The most common cause of pubertal delay, self-limited pubertal delay, is defined by the absence of secondary sexual characteristics after 13 years in girls and 14 years in boys, with progression before age 18. This study aimed to detect novel candidate genes for self-limited pubertal delay.Methods: Eighty-one patients with confirmed self-limited delayed p...

Genomic imprints in humans are epigenetic marks inscribed upon our genomes from the earliest stages of our development, forming a permanent memory of our parental origin. Approximately 1% of human genes are imprinted, with expression that is permanently restricted to either the paternal or the maternal DNA. Genetic or epigenetic errors of imprinting cause a range of imprinting disorders, each with distinctive effects upon growth, development, metabolism and behaviour.<...

Keywords: Short stature, Noonan syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, Silver-Russell syndrome, genetic syndromesIntroduction: Short stature is one of the major components of dysmorphic syndromes. Growth failure may be due to a wide variety of mechanisms, either related to the growth hormone (GH)/insulin-like growth factor axis or to underlying unknown pathologies. At present, GH therapy is used in most syndromic disorders, al...

Background: IGF1 and IGF2 are major regulators of somatic growth acting mainly through the IGF1R. Variants in IGF1 and in IGF1R were identified to cause intrauterine and postnatal growth retardation but variants in IGF2 have not yet been reported.Method: In a multigenerational family four affected members (two siblings, one first degree cousin and the daughter of one sibling) exhibited severe growth retardation with heights between −4.2 and −...

Background: Turner syndrome (TS) affects 1:2,500 females and results from complete or partial loss of one of the X chromosomes. Typical traits associated with TS include short stature, primary ovarian insufficiency (POI), autoimmune diseases, and cardiovascular and endocrine disorders. Long-term follow-up is needed from the time of presentation into adult life. Several genetic mechanisms have been proposed to account for the development of TS-associated featur...

Background: There is increasing evidence from epidemiological studies that some man-made chemicals present in the environment can disrupt endocrine homeostasis in exposed humans. Exposure during foetal life to e.g. phthalates has been linked to adverse effects on testicular and ovarian development, thyroid homeostasis and growth in postnatal life. Exposure to phthalates fluctuates not only from day to day but also over time which poses a major challenge for ex...

Objectives: Achondroplasia (ACH), caused by a mutation in the fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 gene (FGFR3), leads to inhibition of endochondral bone growth. Vosoritide is a biological analogue of C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), a potent stimulator of endochondral bone growth. A Phase 2, open-label, sequential cohort, dose-escalation study was conducted to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of vosoritide for 24 months in children with ACH aged 5&#150...

Currently, the majority of patients with DSD do not have a molecular diagnosis. Although high throughput sequencing is having an impact on the clinical diagnosis of DSD the accurate interpretation genomic datasets of the identification of new gene mutations causing DSD is challenging. This is due to emerging evidence that DSD may be caused by mutations in many different genes and the prevalence of mutations in a single gene may be very low. As larger number of DSD patients are...