ESPE Abstracts

Background: Obesity in childhood and adolescence represents a major health problem of our century, and accounts for a significant increase in morbidity and mortality in adulthood. In Greece, more than 30–35% of children and adolescents are overweight or obese.Objective and hypotheses: To investigate the effectiveness of a comprehensive and personalized multidisciplinary management plan in reducing the prevalence of overweight and obesity in childhoo...

Background: Obesity in childhood and adolescence represents a major health problem of our century, and accounts for a significant increase in morbidity and mortality in adulthood.Objective and hypotheses: To investigate the effectiveness of a comprehensive and personalized plan of action in the prevention and management of overweight and obesity in childhood and adolescence.Method: 470 children and adolescents (mean age±SEM: 9...

Background: Regulatory T cells (Treg) of phenotype CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ involves active suppression of excessive immune response. The population of Treg cells from patients with type 1 diabetes (DM1) have numeric and functional abnormalities. Although there are many reports of investigations on human and animal populations, the role of regulatory T cells in the development of type 1 diabetes is still unclear.Objective and hypotheses: The aim of the study is t...

Background: Natural killer cells are a type of cytotoxic lymphocyte critical to the innate immune system. NK cells from patients with type 1 diabetes (DM1) have numeric and functional abnormalities. However, little is known about the number of NK cells in healthy siblings of children with DM1.Objective and hypotheses: The aim of the study is to compare the population of NK cells and the correlation between NK cells and beta cells autoantibody in healthy ...

Objective and hypotheses: The aim of the study is comparison of the occurrence of islet autoantibodies in healthy siblings of children with T1DM to healthy children from non-diabetic families.Method: Determination of anti-decarboxylase of the glutamic acid antibodies (anti GAD-Ab), anti-protein tyrosine phosphatase (anti IA2), and antibodies against zinc transporter eight (anti ZnT8) in 75 children with T1DM, their siblings – 105, and 77 healthy chi...

Background: Hypogonadism is one of the most frequent endocrine complication after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). In some patients hypogonadism could be transient, but very often coexists with prematury ovarian failure. Classical methods used in the diagnostics of hypogonadism have limitations for the prognosis of ovarian reserve.Objective: The aim of the study was to assess ovarian reserve in patients after HSCT using ev...

Background: Accurate prediction of responsiveness to growth hormone (GH) therapy is an important issue. The 1st year response to treatment is regarded as significant predictor of the attained final height. Neural networks are techniques of machine learning which do not require any assumptions and preprocessing of data, contrary to linear regression models.Objective and hypotheses: The aim of the study was to predict height velocity (HV) during 1st year o...

According to current recommendations, children with height SDS <-3.0, normal growth hormone (GH) peak in stimulation tests (stimGH) and severe IGF-I deficiency (IGFD) may be diagnosed with primary IGFD and treated with recombinant IGF-I. The need for direct confirmation of GH insensitivity is a matter of discussion. On the other hand, children born small for gestational age (SGA) with no catch-up growth are qualified to GH therapy despite normal GH secretion. The fact that...

Background: Tumor necrosis factor alpha (cachexin) is a cell signaling cytokine involved in systemic inflammation process. It is produced chiefly by activated macrophages, although it can be produced by many other cell types such as CD4+ lymphocytes, NK cells, neutrophils, mast cells, eosinophils, and neurons. The primary role of TNF alpha is the regulation of immune cells. TNF, being an endogenous pyrogen, is able to induce fever, apoptotic cell death, an...

Prediction of growth hormone (GH) therapy effectiveness in children with short stature is an important issue for optimizing its course. Recently, our research group has published prediction models derived with neural networks. The main predictors of final height (FH) in our model were: patient’s height SDS at therapy onset, pre-treatment change of height SDS (HSDS V0) and pre-treatment IGF-I and IGFBP-3 secretion but not the results of GH stimulation tests; the...