ESPE Abstracts

While it had been widely believed at the end of last century that most problems in steroid metabolism had already been solved, and not much more significant discoveries were to be expected anymore, recent exciting observations and rediscoveries have initiated a renaissance in steroid metabolism research. These revolutionary findings have often been initially made in animals and have also significantly been driven by new steroid analytical techniques based on mass spectrometry....

While steroid hormones as universal signals of intercellular communication arose very early in the evolution of life, it was only recently that their isolation and structural elucidation has been achieved. Steroid hormones are small, structurally closely related molecules sharing the typical 4-cyclic sterane basic structure. However, there is a big diversity of functionally different steroid hormones and their metabolism is complex. Thus, their analysis is highly challenging. ...

Background: Adrenarche describes the developmental event of the human adrenal cortex when the zona reticularis increases the synthesis of C19 steroids (DHEA/-S) markedly at around 6-8 years of age. Early appearance of this event is called premature adrenarche (PA) and has been associated with adverse outcomes including polycystic ovary syndrome and metabolic syndrome. Recently novel biosynthetic pathways of androgen production have been revealed, but their rol...

Background: The majority of children with primary nephrogenic diabetes insipidus grow below the third centile.Objective and hypotheses: Effect of rhGH treatment on growth in a patient with primary nephrogenic diabetes insipidus.Results: The patient is an 11-years and 2 month old Caucasian boy of unrelated healthy parents. At the age of 7 years and 9 month he was admitted to our hospital for evaluation of polydipsia and polyuria. Hi...

Background: Loss-of-function variants in the NR5A1 gene are frequent causes of 46,XY differences of sex development (DSD). To date, the Human Gene Mutation Database contains 291 NR5A1 variants, most of which are missense (69%). Mouse models demonstrated the effect of loss of SF-1 on sex development, but the interactome of SF-1 is huge and an explanation for the broad phenotype is still missing. Controversies exist as: a) in vitro transactivation assays of NR5A...

Background: Good glycemic control prevents long-term complications of microvascular and macrovascular diseases in type 1 diabetes (T1DM).We aimed to investigate whether our patients had A1c values <7.5% as recommended by ISPAD and how therapy modality, duration of diabetes and pubertal status affected the metabolic control of our patients. We also set out to compare our quality of care with our results of 2008 and with other publ...

Aim and background: Growth hormone (GH) treatment of short children born SGA and its effects on growth varies greatly between treated individuals. In the present study we tested the performance of a preexisting growth prediction model (Ranke et al.; JCE&M 2003 pp. 125–131) to estimate 1st-year height velocity (HV) in a german subcohort of prepubertal children born SGA treated with GH (Omnitrope).Methods: 190 treatment-naïve prepu...

Background: Differences in sex development (DSD) comprise a large group of rare, mostly genetic disorders along the path of human sexual development. Since the Chicago Consensus, health care providers group them in sex chromosome DSD, 46,XY and 46,XX DSD with subgroups regarding their effect on sex hormone synthesis, action or excess, on gonadal development, and others. Incidence of rare DSD is not well established despite public interest.<p class="abstext...

Background: NR5A1/SF-1 variants result in a wide range of phenotypes including DSD, male infertility, and primary ovarian insufficiency (POI). Little is known of how NR5A1/SF-1 variants affect puberty in individuals with or without DSD. This study aimed to assess the impact of NR5A1/SF-1 variants on pubertal development and investigate whether abnormal puberty is linked to the severity of DSD in an international cohort with NR5A1...

Background: Steroidogenic Factor 1 (NR5A1/SF-1) is essential for the development and function of human sex and steroid organs. Variants of SF-1 lead to a broad spectrum of phenotypes including adrenal insufficiency and differences of sex development (DSD), but data on the whole picture of phenotypes in individuals with SF-1 variants are currently lacking. We aim to investigate the phenotype of individuals with SF-1 variants in a large interna...