ESPE Abstracts

Background: Hyperthyroidism is uncommon in children. Graves’ disease is the most common cause in pediatric population. The diagnosis is based on the presence of anti-TSH receptor antibodies. Pediatric Graves’ disease has some peculiarities mainly in term of treatment and evolution, since its prognostic is different than adults.Aim: The aim of this study is to describe the epidemiological, clinical and biological features of pediatric Graves...

Background: Dual-specificity tyrosine phosphorylation-regulated kinase 1B (DYRK1B) is a nutrient-sensing protein that suppresses the RAS–RAF–MEK pathway and is known to have a role in glucose uptake and glycolysis. The expression of DYRK1B increases during adipogenic differentiation suggesting an important role in adipogenesis. Mutations in DYRK1B have been described in three Iranian families and five Caucasian patients w...

Background: The leptin-melanocortin pathway is pivotal in appetite and energy homeostasis. Pathogenic variants in genes involved in this pathway lead to severe early-onset monogenic obesity (MO). The MC4R gene plays a central role in the leptin-melanocortin, and variants predominantly heterozygous in this gene, are the most common cause of MO. We identified a novel heterozygous variant c.802T>C p.Tyr268His in the MC4R gene in two unrelated patients with mor...

Background: Graves’ Disease (GD) is the most common cause of hyperthyroidism in children and develops because of stimulation of the thyroid gland by TSH receptor auto-antibodies (TSHR Ab). An increased risk of obesity has been described in both adults and children following initiation of anti-thyroid drug (ATD) therapy but the longer term impact of GD and it’s treatment on physique in children is unclear.Aims:</strong...

Introduction: Central precocious puberty (CPP) is due to premature activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis. Mutations in the imprinted gene MKRN3 are the most common monogenic form of CPP. Recently, attention was directed to DLK1, another imprinted gene. Defects in this gene resulted to be a rare cause of CPP in girls and adult women with precocious menarche, obesity and metabolic derangement. We aimed to investigate a cohort of female and male p...

Introduction:Up to 20% of children with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) develops low-grade optic pathway gliomas(OPGs) that can result in neuroendocrinopathy.The aim of the study was to identify prognostic factors for developing neuroendocrinopathies in patients with NF1 and OPGs before any treatment.Methods: Records of 117 children with NF1 and OPGs followed at 4 Italian centers between 1997-20...

Background: Antipituitary (APA) and antihypothalamus antibodies (AHA) have not been investigated in children and adolescents with brain tumors.Patients and Methods: Sixty-three patients with craniopharyngioma, glioma and germinoma treated with surgery and/or chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy were evaluated at a median age of 13 years. Forty-one had MPHD, 6 had a single defect being GH the most common (65.1%), followed...

Central diabetes insipidus (CDI) in children is caused by brain tumors, Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH), trauma, infections, or genetic abnormalities in about 60% of the cases. In the remaining 40%, CDI is idiopathic even after detailed clinical and radiological investigations. Aim of the study was to assess whether measurement of serum antibodies against human growth hormone (GH) could aid in the identification of the etiological factors for CDI.<p class="abst...

Objectives: To evaluate the potential diagnostic role and sensitivity of T2-weighted DRIVE sequence in pituitary stalk (PS) identification and measurements in patients with hypothalamic-pituitary disorders. The degree of agreement and reliability between standard pre- and post-contrast T1-weighted images and T2-DRIVE will be tested in a large group of patients with pituitary dysfunction.Design: We searched for pituitary MRI reports using ‘T2-DRIVE&#...

Background: Mutations in the gene encoding LHX4, a homeodomain-containing factor with two LIM domains, are responsible for dominant hypopituitarisms with incomplete penetrance and variable expressivity. To date, only 14 unambiguous LHX4 mutations have been reported. Among those cases, 12 had an absent or ectopic posterior pituitary (EPP) and/or an abnormal sella turcica.Objective and hypotheses: To i) assess the contribution of LHX4 in combined pituitary...