ESPE Abstracts

Background: The benefit of re-screening at 15 days of life in infants born to mothers with thyroid diseases (TD+) is a debated issue. In Italy, all the 16 newborn screening (NBS) laboratories use TSH measurement on dried blood spot as primary screening test for primary congenital hypothyroidism (CH) and adopt a 2-screen strategy in special categories of infants at risk of delayed TSH rise (preterm birth, admission to NICU, extra-thyroidal malformations, twinni...

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. ...

Though presenting the analytical techniques with a more longstanding tradition, mass spectrometry based methods had been until lately superseded by the faster immunoassay techniqes in the field of endocrinology. However, the introduction of fast commercial direct immunoassays has led to a dramatic loss in specificity, especially in the field of pediatric endocrinology. For a long time the enormous analytical power of chromatography and mass spectrometry based techniques regard...

Background: Severe congenital growth hormone deficiency (cGHD) is a rare but potentially life-threatening condition. Even though random growth hormone (GH) can confirm cGHD during the first week of life, the diagnosis remains extremely challenging in the absence of reliable reference values in healthy neonates and thus of a best diagnostic cut-off.Aims: First, to provide solid reference values for GH concentrations in te...

Background: Homozygous natriuretic peptide receptor-2 (NPR2) mutations cause acromesomelic dysplasia, type Maroteaux, a skeletal dysplasia with extreme disproportionate short stature and recently, heterozygous NPR2 mutations have been identified also in patients with idiopathic short stature (ISS, 2–6%). SHOX mutations are found in ~2–5% of ISS cases and ~70% of Léri-Weill dyschondrosteosis (LWD) cases, characterized by disproportionat...

Background: Mutations in SHOX or its regulatory regions have been detected in ~70% of Léri-Weill dyschondrosteosis (LWD) and ~2.5% of idiopathic short stature (ISS) cases, suggesting the implication of other genes or loci. Recent studies have identified NPR2 defects in ISS patients.Objective and hypotheses: To investigate if NPR2 mutations can account for a proportion of the cases referred for LWD and ISS in whom no SHOX/PAR1 mutation was detected.<...

Background: Haemopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has become the treatment of choice for many inherited and acquired pediatric disorders. Cure is not without consequences, and HSCT survivors are at risk of early mortality and developing endocrine complications. Thyroid is highly susceptible to damage from the conditioning therapy for HSCT. The aim of this study is to evaluate the percentage and risk factors of thyroid dysfunction and risk factors of it...

Background: Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has emerged as an increasingly successful option to cure a variety of malignant disorders in children. Children benefit from improved survival; however, HSCT is associated with numerous acute and long-term toxicities. Osteoporosis is a well described, late effect of allogeneic HSCT, associated with corticosteroid treatment and patients exposed to cumulative doses >9000 mg/m2 of prednisone...

Background/Aims: Pediatric obesity remains an ongoing serious international health concern. Whether liver dysfunction is related to thyroid dysfunction in this population is controversial. Compare SGPT, TSH, FT4 and insulin resistance indexes between children with obesity or severe obesity.Methods: 279 children (143 females) with ΒΜΙ (≥95percentile) (CDC BMI curves) were divided in two groups (Group 1, ob...