ESPE Abstracts

Aims: The golden standard to characterize pubertal maturation is the analysis of steroid hormones in the blood. The aim of the investigation was to assess whether the analysis of salivary steroids is similarly able to characterize male pubertal development.Methods: The investigation included 165 normal boys (mean age 12.7±2.8 years, mean body mass index 19.6±4.2 kg/m2). Pubic hair stages were stratified by Tanner and testicular volum...

Background: Measurement of testicular volume is important when conditions associated with a delay or advance in the onset of puberty, or micro- and macroorchidism, are suspected. Measured testicular volumes must be compared with reference data, preferably expressed in S.D. curves using the LMS method, as is routinely done for many auxological measurements in pediatrics. The current study therefore aimed to construct LMS-smoothed age-reference charts for testicul...

Background: Boys affected with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) have lower bone mineral density compared with unaffected boys.Objective and hypotheses: We sought to determine the effects on bone mineral density (BMD) of 1 year treatment with Risedronate and calcium/vitamin D supplementation vs calcium/vitamin D supplementation alone.Method: BMD was measured at spine and whole body. We obtained early morning fasting blood samples f...

Background: The androgen receptor (AR) is essential for the development of primary and secondary male characteristics and is activated by its ligand dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Reduced AR activity can cause undervirilization and infertility. We recently developed an assay to test AR function as a ligand-dependent transcriptional activator in human genital skin fibroblasts (GF). So far it is unclear, if AR expression levels correlate with AR function in the male external genital...

Background: Short stature caused by point mutations or deletions of the short stature homeobox (SHOX) gene (SHOX haploinsufficiency, SHI) is a registered indication for growth hormone (GH) treatment. Patients with a SHOX enhancer deletion (SED) have a similar phenotype, but their response to GH is unknown. It is uncertain if duplications of SHOX or its enhancer (SDUP) can cause short stature.Objective and hypotheses: To describe the clinical characterist...

Background: Congenital hyperinsulinism is the most common cause of persistent hypoglycaemia in early infancy. Mutations in the HNF4A gene lead to transient hyperinsulinism in early infancy and maturity-onset diabetes of youth (MODY1), later in life. Fanconi syndrome is a generalised dysfunction of the renal proximal tubule with a loss of glucose, amino acids, phosphate, low molecular weight proteins, bicarbonate and urate, causing growth failure and rickets in childho...

Background/Introduction: Whole exome sequencing (WES) revolutionized clinical genetics in patients with differences of sex development (DSD). However, our ability to interpret WES data is limited by our incomplete understanding of the mechanisms involved in DSD. Thus, we created a methodology that scores potential candidates based on single cells transcriptomics of human male gonadal cells and applied it to WES data from a cohort of genetically male (46,XY) DS...

Drosophila melanogaster as a study model has already significantly contributed to the understanding of the mechanisms of many human diseases. So far D. melanogaster has rarely been exploited as a model for human sex development. Nanda et.al already demonstrated in 2009 that the Drosophila orthologue of SOX9, Sox100B is essential for testis development in Drosophila. Similarly, we could demonstrate that the fly homolog of STARD8, cv-c</...

Introduction: Lockdown measures following the COVID-19 pandemic are shown to have greatly affected lifestyle behaviours and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of children. The impact on children with severe obesity has not yet been described. Aim of this study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on eating behaviours, physical activity (PA), screen time, and HRQoL of children (including adolescents) with severe obesity....

Background: Paediatric obesity is a multifactorial disease characterized by an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure. In rare cases, obesity is caused by underlying medical disorders arising from disruptions in the leptin-melanocortin pathway, which regulates satiety and energy expenditure.Aim: To investigate resting energy expenditure (REE) in relation to body composition in children and adolescents with sever...