ESPE Abstracts

Background: Although metabolically obese normal weight (MONW) adults are at increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD), little is known regarding MONW children.Objective and hypotheses: To characterize lifestyle habits and insulin dynamics of MONW children.Method: Caucasian youth (n=630) aged 8–10 years, with at least one obese biological parent, were studied (QUALITY cohort). We defined MONW c...

Background: Lifestyle interventions show a long lasting weight reduction in only 10–20% of obese children and adolescents. Leptin as one major player within the central regulation of food intake and energy expenditure is most likely to mediate the endogenous drive for weight regain.Objective and hypotheses: To estimate weight regain after weight loss and the role of leptin in regain.Method: We included 153 obese children/adole...

Background: Impaired glucose tolerance ((IGT), glucose ≥140mg/dl at 120’ in the oral-glucose-tolerance-test (OGTT)) is prevalent in childhood obesity. It is frequently reversed after weight loss, although an eventual role for metformin treatment has been postulated.Objective: To evaluate the benefits of metformin addition to conservative treatment on weight loss and IGT in obese children.Patients and methods: We studied ...

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: Silver Russell syndrome (SRS) is a heterogeneous disorder characterised by intrauterine and post-natal growth retardation, relative macrocephaly, protruding forehead, feeding difficulties and body asymmetry. Variants in HMGA2 are a rare cause of SRS and despite strong evidence for the crucial role of HMGA2 in growth regulation, its functional role in human linear growth is unclear.Methods: Patients w...