ESPE Abstracts

Background: In addition to its function in circadian rhythm Melatonin plays an important role in energy metabolism and body weight regulation. In animals pinealectomy induces insulin resistance and administration of melatonin to diabetes prone rats ameliorates their glucose metabolism. Furthermore loss-of-function mutations of the melatonin receptor gene are associated with insulin resistance and DM II in humans.Objective and hypotheses: So far the effec...

Background: Close monitoring of growth is vital when following children with achondroplasia yet existing growth curves suffer from a simple chart format and their clinical use is therefore limited. Also, references for body proportions; i.e. sitting height, relative sitting height and arm span, are lacking.Objective and hypotheses: The aim of this study was to construct age-specific growth curves for height, weight, body mass index, head circumference an...

Background: There is a shortage of clinically useful growth charts for following growth development in conditions with extreme short stature. At the same time, it is not possible to construct syndrome-specific growth charts for many of these conditions due to low prevalence and perhaps also often a great inter-individual variability of the growth defect within a certain syndrome.Objective and hypotheses: The aim of this project was to evaluate growth pat...

Background: In the past, the majority of the pacients with Type 1 Diabetes (DM1) had late puberty due to hipogonadotropic hipogonadism as a result of insulin deficiency. However, the use of intensive insulin therapy nowadays, results in higher BMI what can lead to an earlier puberty. Insulin administered subcutaneously is not processed by the liver, which implies increased exposure to this hormone in the ovary leading to greater activation of theca and granulo...

Background: An important issue in the management of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is the best initial dose of levothyroxine (L-T4) in order to achieve optimal neurocognitive outcomes. Both European and American guidelines suggest an initial dose of 10–15 μg/kg per die but trials on long-term effects of different doses within this range are lacking.Objective and hypotheses: This was a multicenter randomized trial to ev...

The pathogenetic role of genetic factors in congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is now widely known. The constant evolution of diagnostic methods in the field of medical genetics provides the opportunity to obtain an etiological diagnosis in CH patients with genetic defects in candidate genes. We performed genetic analysis by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) of 18 candidate genes (DUOX2, DUOXA2, FOXE1, GLIS3, IGSF1, IYD, NKX2-1, NKX2-5, PAX8, SLC16A2, SLC26A4, SLC5A5, TG, THRA,...

Background: Hypothalamic-pituitary (HP) deficiencies are frequent in childhood brain tumor survivors (CBTS) after cranial radiation. There is currently no consensus on the most optimal way to screen for HP dysfunction regarding diagnostic tests or time interval. It is not known whether MRI changes in time in the HP-region or in brain volume are predictive of HP dysfunction.Aim: To quantify changes in the HP-region and in brain volume on MRI in CBTS after...

Background: The majority of children diagnosed with idiopathic isolated growth hormone deficiency (IIGHD) show a normal growth hormone (GH) secretion (assessed by GH stimulation tests) when retested at near adult height (NAH). It appears plausible that if normal stimulated GH secretion is observed in mid-puberty, continuing recombinant human GH (rhGH) treatment may only have a minor effect on NAH. The effect on NAH has never been investigated in a prospective ...

Introduction: Growth hormone (GH) treatment is essential for growth in children with GH deficiency. Also short children born small for gestational age (SGA), and children with syndromes like Turner Syndrome (TS), Noonan Syndrome (NS) and Silver Russel Syndrome (SRS) can benefit from GH treatment. For children with needle anxiety GH delivered by a jet device can be a solution for the daily subcutaneous treatment for many years. In 2021, a global recall of the o...

Background: Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is a common and preventable cause of mental retardation in children, and is detected using dried blood spots in many neonatal screening programs. Upon suspicion of CH, plasma free thyroxine (FT4) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) concentrations are measured. CH can be of thyroidal or central origin (CH-T and CH-C, respectively). While CH-T diagnosis is based on an elevated plasma TSH in combination with a low FT4,...