ESPE Abstracts

Background: Treatment adherence to daily subcutaneous rhGH is a burden for GHD patients, with noncompliance reported in up to 77% of patients and significantly associated with reduced efficacy (Rosenfeld Endocr Pract 2008; Cutfield PLoS One 2011). Somavaratan, a novel rhGH fusion protein with t1/2 >100 h, demonstrated clinically meaningful improvements in height velocity and IGF-I in prepubertal children with GH deficiency (GHD) in a multicenter, randomized, Pha...

Background: GH treatment in severe GH deficiency during the transition period is a key matter.Objective and hypotheses: To assess the outcome of 30 severe GH deficient (GHD) patients after a structured transition program, in a French Universitary Hospital between 1988 and 2014.Method: 30 patients treated with GH until final height for congenital deficiency: 16/30 (12 ectopic posterior pituitary), brain tumors: 11/30 (5 Rathke’...

Background: Tubular immaturity, responsible for sodium wasting, is critical during the neonatal period, particularly in preterm neonates. This relates to partial renal aldosterone resistance (Martinerie, Ped Res 2009), coincident with low tubular expression of the mineralocorticoid receptor in newborns (Martinerie, Endocrinology 2009).Objective and methods: Our clinical trial (NCT01176162) aimed to assess aldosterone resistance in neona...

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: The melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) pathway is critical for the regulation of energy balance. Variants in a number of genes within this pathway have well-established associations with severe obesity. However, the overall frequency of rare variants in these genes has not been assessed systematically in a clinically relevant population, and it is unknown whether variant frequency differs depending on the age of ascertainment. Genetic testing can impro...

Background: Prader-Willi syndrome is a rare genetic neurodevelopmental disorder caused by a paternal deficiency of maternally imprinted gene expression located in the chromosome 15q11-q13 region. Previous studies have demonstrated that several classes of neurodevelopmental disorders can be attributed to either over- or under-expression of specific genes that may lead to impairments in neuronal generation, differentiation, maturation and growth. Epigenetic chan...

A new condition, unique to Irish Travellers, was first described clinically as autosomal recessive natural killer and glucocorticoid deficiency (AR-NKGCD) ORPHA:75391 in 2008 and was attributed to recessive founder variant in MCM4/PRKDC gene in 2012. Irish Travellers are an indigenous endogamous population numbering ~40,000 in the Republic of Ireland. AR-NKGCD is characterised by short stature, glucocorticoid and natural killer cell deficiency and is a disorder of DNA repair. ...

Background: Although Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization growth charts, dichotomizing “girls versus boys,” are commonly used, scenarios exist where this binary approach may not be ideal. These scenarios include care for transgender youth undergoing transitions, non-binary youth, and rare diseases where sex-specific growth chart creation is impractical. There is a need for growth charts and z-score calculat...

Background: A mutation in EIF2S3 (NM_001415; Xp22.11) was previously associated with microcephaly and developmental delay in a single pedigree. EIF2S3 encodes the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2 subunit 3 (eIF2γ), the largest of three EIF2 subunits. EIF2 initiates protein synthesis by forming a ternary complex with GTP and initiator methionyl-tRNA which then binds to the 40S ribosomal subunit, enabling scanning of mRNA from the 5′ end to...

Introduction: Prematurity, a worldwide health issue, is often associated with renal tubular immaturity leading to major salt loss, whose mechanisms remain poorly understood. Moreover, these premature infants are prone to develop hypertension early in adulthood.Objective: To study the ontogenesis of renal mineralocorticoid and glucocorticoid signaling pathways in preterm infants and to evaluate their respective role during neonatal adaptation and in the e...