ESPE Abstracts

Background: Age at menarche in girls varies widely between individuals, is a heritable trait and is associated with risks for adult obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and all-cause mortality.Objective and Hypotheses: The mechanisms that determine pubertal timing and underlie its links to later disease remain unclear.Method: We performed a genome-wide association study meta-analysis of genome-wide or den...

Background: Cognitive function has been shown to improve following GH treatment in adults. In children born small for gestational age (SGA) IQ scores were found to improve following 24 months of GH treatment.Objective and hypotheses: The aim was to observe cognitive function in pre-pubertal, short children with isolated GH deficiency (IGHD) or idiopathic short stature (ISS) during the first 24 months of GH treatment. Cognitive testing was carried out usi...

Background: Alterations in the timing or expression level of players involved in sex determination and differentiation can cause disorders of sex development, gonadal dysgenesis and germ cell neoplasms later in life. The mitosis–meiosis switch is one of the first manifestations of female sex differentiation and we hypothesise that a conflict between meiosis-inhibiting (male pathway) and meiosis-inducing signals (female pathway) is one of the possible mechanisms for disrup...

Introduction: Noonan syndrome (NS) and Turner syndrome (TS) are distinct genetic disorders with similarities in phenotype, including short stature. The NordiNet® IOS and the ANSWER Program® are observational studies evaluating effectiveness and safety of GH treatment in real-world practice.Methods: The study population included children with NS or TS with puberty recordings, enrolled in NordiNet® IOS or ANS...

Background: The adrenal glands and gonads develop from an area of intermediate mesoderm between 6 and 10 weeks post conception (wpc) in humans. Elucidating the genomic components and pathways in these processes could reveal novel aspects of human developmental biology and new factors implicated in adrenal insufficiency and DSD.Objective and hypotheses: To develop a unique genomic atlas of adrenal and gonad development during critical stages of human embr...

Background: Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with the response to GH therapy have previously been identified in growth hormone deficient (GHD) children in the PREDICT long-term follow-up (LTFU) study (NCT00699855).Objective and hypotheses: To assess the effect of GHD severity on the predictive value of genetic markers of growth response.Method: We used pre-pubertal GHD children (peak GH <10 μg/l) from the ...

Background: Childhood haematopoietic stem cell transplantation and total body irradiation (HSCT/TBI) survivors have multiple risk factors for reduced bone mineral density (BMD) and poor growth. Reduced z-scores from dual energy x-Ray absorptiometry (DEXA) have been reported, but are unreliable in patients with short stature/abnormal body composition.Objective: To investigate the influence of HSCT/TBI on size-corrected BMD in childhood leukaemia ...

Background: Prediction of response to recombinant GH (r-GH) is currently based on regression modelling. This approach generates a prediction equation which can be applied to data from an individual child. However this method can underestimate the effect of inter-dependent variables. Random forest classification (RFC) is an alternative prediction method based on decision trees that is not sensitive to the relationships between variables.Objective and hypo...

Background: The Easypod Connect Observational Study (ECOS) observational study follows children with GHD, SGA and Turner syndrome receiving r-hGH therapy for up to 5 years, with interim analyses each year. The easypod electromechanical auto-injector device enables accurate, real-world digital records of patients’ adherence to rhGH to be collected for evaluation.Objective and hypotheses: The primary objective of ECOS is to evaluate the level of adher...

Introduction: Hypoferraemia is the most common nutritional deficiency worldwide and a leading cause of potential developmental disorders in children. Obesity seems to be associated with this condition, but it is still unclear if it is caused either by depleted iron stores, diminished availability, or both.Aim: To analyse the relationships between childhood obesity, iron metabolism and inflammation....