ESPE Abstracts

Case report: A 10-year-old Italian girl presented with a painless, hard swelling in left fronto-orbital region noted two years earlier. She had no headache or other symptoms; ophthalmologic evaluation revealed no signs of intracranial hypertension; the visual field showed a reduced level of sensitivity in the upper sector of the left eye.Her previous medical history was not relevant except for a mild head injury reported two years earlier. The girl was a secon...

Background: Increasing incidence of pediatric obesity has been observed worldwide. Metabolic syndrome, characterized by visceral obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension and impaired glucose metabolism, is associated with obesity.Objective and hypotheses: To evaluate early ocular signs of hypertension by retinography in a cohort of overweight (BMI>85th)/obese (BMI>95th) children, in order to define the prevalence of retinal alterations and characteriz...

Background: The use of international or local growth charts for the definition of pediatric obesity is still debated. Inappropriate reference standards may lead to under/over-estimation of the prevalence and consequently of the number of patients to be included in diagnostic work-up.Objective and hypotheses: To define the differences between patients considered obese according to either CDC or Italian growth charts.Method: A single...

Background: Genes in the HLA region confer about 50% of the genetic risk of type 1 diabetes (T1DM). More than 40 different genes give a minor contribution to T1DM risk, some of them are related to the immune function.Case presentation: A girl was referred at the age of 9 months with severe ketoacidosis in T1DM at onset. Anti-insulin autoantibodies were positive. She was the only daughter of unrelated Caucasian parents, born at term by vaginal delivery. T...

Background: In children with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) on Growth Hormone treatment (GHT) bone age (BA) acceleration is often observed. Little is known on reasons and consequences.Objective and hypotheses: To quantify BA acceleration in pre-pubertal PWS children on GHT and to investigate how BA correlates with weight gain and age at onset of GHT. To assess how final height depends on pre-pubertal bone maturation, weight gain and age at onset of GHT....

Background: Klinefelter syndrome (KS) is a genetic disorder consisting in a variable number of additional X chromosomes in a male individual. KS patients can rarely develop peripheral precocious puberty (PPP) caused by extragonadal germ cell cancers (eGCCs) producing hormones with androgenic activity. KS patients are at higher risk for eGCC when compared to the healthy populationCase report: We report the case of M., a 8...

Background: Growth hormone (GH) treatment is indicated for children who are born small for gestational age (SGA) and fail to achieve sufficient catch-up growth during infancy and remain short throughout childhood.Aims: To evaluate the effect of GH treatment in a large, multicentric, Portuguese SGA children cohort and to analyze for correlation between GH treatment response and clinical factors.<str...

Oculocerebrorenal syndrome of Lowe (OCRL) is an X-linked and multisystem disorder with clinical symptoms of congenital cataracts, severe mental retardation, hypotonia, areflexia, and incomplete Fanconi syndrome of the proximal renal tubules. We report a 15-year-old short stature male with a severe form of OCRL syndrome, diagnosed based on bilateral congenital cataract, proteinuria, tubulopathy, and dysmorphic findings. The physical examination revealed a height of 152 cm (-2.7...

Background: Children born SGA are at risk of becoming short adults. Although most children born SGA show catch-up growth in the first 24 months of life, approximately 10% remain below the 3rd centile throughout childhood and adolescence. The available evidence shows that GH therapy can increase adult height in short children born SGA although long-term response is variable and closely related to the 1st year response.Aims:</stron...

Background: Thyroid hormones act via receptors (TRα; TRβ) encoded by separate genes (THRA, THRB). Mutations in THRA are a recently-recognised cause of Resistance to Thyroid Hormone alpha (RTHα), a disorder with tissue-specific hypothyroidism but near-normal thyroid function tests.Aim: We describe the youngest recorded case of RTHa, in a 2yr old boy with disproportionate short stature, ...