ESPE Abstracts

Hypercalcaemic disorders in children may present with poor feeding, hypotonia, lethargy, dehydration, vomiting, polyuria, failure to thrive, seizures and hypertension. The causes of hypercalcaemia in children, which can be classified as parathyroid hormone (PTH)-dependent or PTH-independent, are similar to those occurring in adults except that primary hyperparathyroidism and malignancy which the most common causes in adults, and account for >90% of adult patients with hype...

Resistance to thyroid hormone mediated by defective TRβ (RTHβ) or TRα(RTHα).Separate genes (THRA, THRB) undergo alternate splicing, generating nuclear receptors (TRα1, TRβ1, TRβ2) with distinct tissue distributions, which mediate thyroid hormone action; the function of a non-hormone binding protein (α 2), derived from the THRA locus, is unknown.RTHβ a dominantl...

Background: Swyer syndrome (46,XY pure gonadal dysgenesis) is a rare disorder, which is characterized by female phenotype, female internal genitalia and fibrotic and primitive gonads. Classically, breast development and menstruation are absent due to hypergonadotropic hypogonadism.Objective and hypotheses: To our knowledge, three cases of Swyer syndrome with spontaneous breast development have been reported so far. In these reports, breast development wa...

Background: Initiation and progression of puberty requires concerted action of activating and inhibiting factors. Recently, cases of central precocious puberty have been linked to loss-of-function mutations of makorin RING-finger protein 3 (MKRN3) indicating a pivotal inhibitory role of MKRN3 on GnRH secretion.Objective and hypotheses: To investigate peripubertal circulating MKRN3 levels in healthy boys.Method: Healthy boys (n<...

Background: Noonan syndrome (NS) is a rare genetic disease characterized by facial dysmorphism, short stature, heart defects, chest deformities, and variable developmental delay/learning disabilities. Almost 80% of patients have a mutation in the genes encoding components of the RAS/MAPK pathway. Puberty was described as delayed in NS patients, but few studies are focusing on this subject and genotype-phenotype correlations so far.<s...

Background: Optimal glycemic control in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is often hampered owing to psychologic maladjustment of both patients and their parents. Accumulating evidence suggests that hyperglycemia may be associated with prolonged activation of the stress system.Objective and hypotheses: To pilot test a 12-week intervention program including psychoeducation about stress, healthy lifestyle, diaphragmatic breathin...

Background: Recent studies have shown a rising trend in pediatric obesity. However, studies dealing with the ultimate metabolic consequences of pediatric obesity and the means of accurately predicting these consequences are limited.Objective and hypotheses: To study the utility of WHtR as a marker of insulin resistance. To validate the presently used cutoffs (≧0.5) and validate its utility in populations studies.Method: 96 c...

Background/Aim: 25 to 40% of children with well-controlled X-linked hypophosphatemia (XLH) show linear growth failure, despite optimal conventional treatment (oral phosphate supplementation and active forms of vitamin D) with final height -2 SDS. Recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) may be an adjuvant treatment of the growth retardation in these patients. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to describe how rhGH treatment improves final heigh...

Introduction: Obesity is a multifactorial disease resulting from an interplay between genetics and the environment. Metabolic, nutritional, psychosocial, and lifestyle factors participate, promoting various degrees of overweight or obesity. Pediatric obesity increases after infancy and is higher in early adulthood, showing a heritability of up to 85%. Genetic variants associated with BMI in children can exert their effects by affecting eating behavior, as is t...

Background: X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (X-ALD) presents with two phenotypes: i) an adult form (adrenomyeloneuropathy, AMN), that involves axonal tracts without demyelination within the spinal cord and affects adult males and more than 80% of X-ALD heterozygote women in adulthood resulting in severe paraplegia. This far the most frequent form of X-ALD. Addison’s disease is very rare in X-ALD women but frequent in adult AMN males, very often with onset years or decades b...