ESPE Abstracts

Background: Close monitoring of growth is vital when following children with achondroplasia yet existing growth curves suffer from a simple chart format and their clinical use is therefore limited. Also, references for body proportions; i.e. sitting height, relative sitting height and arm span, are lacking.Objective and hypotheses: The aim of this study was to construct age-specific growth curves for height, weight, body mass index, head circumference an...

Background: There is a shortage of clinically useful growth charts for following growth development in conditions with extreme short stature. At the same time, it is not possible to construct syndrome-specific growth charts for many of these conditions due to low prevalence and perhaps also often a great inter-individual variability of the growth defect within a certain syndrome.Objective and hypotheses: The aim of this project was to evaluate growth pat...

Background: In the past, the majority of the pacients with Type 1 Diabetes (DM1) had late puberty due to hipogonadotropic hipogonadism as a result of insulin deficiency. However, the use of intensive insulin therapy nowadays, results in higher BMI what can lead to an earlier puberty. Insulin administered subcutaneously is not processed by the liver, which implies increased exposure to this hormone in the ovary leading to greater activation of theca and granulo...

Background: An important issue in the management of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is the best initial dose of levothyroxine (L-T4) in order to achieve optimal neurocognitive outcomes. Both European and American guidelines suggest an initial dose of 10–15 μg/kg per die but trials on long-term effects of different doses within this range are lacking.Objective and hypotheses: This was a multicenter randomized trial to ev...

The pathogenetic role of genetic factors in congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is now widely known. The constant evolution of diagnostic methods in the field of medical genetics provides the opportunity to obtain an etiological diagnosis in CH patients with genetic defects in candidate genes. We performed genetic analysis by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) of 18 candidate genes (DUOX2, DUOXA2, FOXE1, GLIS3, IGSF1, IYD, NKX2-1, NKX2-5, PAX8, SLC16A2, SLC26A4, SLC5A5, TG, THRA,...

Background:Short stature may be due to various pathological conditions or may be idiopathic. SHOX (Short Stature Homeobox on X chromosome) gene is involved in the regulation of skeletal growth and is a main cause of short stature on monogenic basis. The frequency of this condition in children with idiopathic short stature (ISS) was reported to range from 2 to 17%. The phenotypic spectrum is heterogeneous, varying from Léri-Weill dyschondrosteosis (LWD) ...

Current hormone substitution therapy of patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is suboptimal and cannot mimic physiological daily rhythms of hormone secretion. As supra-physiological corticoid doses are necessary to avoid adrenal androgen excess, patients show substantially increased comorbidities such as hyperglycemia, arterial hypertension, reduced growth and osteoporosis. Moreover plasma ACTH is often inadequately suppressed, resulting in undesired excess adrena...

Background: Small for gestational age (SGA) children are at increased risk of metabolic syndrome in adulthood and have below-average bone mineral density (BMD). Growth hormone treatment reduces fat mass and insulin sensitivity, increases lean body mass and improves height and BMD in short SGA children. We aimed to evaluate changes in body composition in SGA patients treated with growth hormone (GH), after its cessation, compared with young adults born appropriate for gestation...

The experiences of older adults with Variations in Sex Characteristics (VSC or Differences/Disorders in Sex Development/DSD) are well documented. However there has been a gap in the literature with respect to representing the voices of younger people. This qualitative research study has been conducted in collaboration with Intersex Trust Aotearoa New Zealand. Ten young people with VSC were recruited via health professionals, intersex advocates, support groups and social media ...

Background: Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) is a rare disease due to end organ resistance of androgens. AIS is commonly caused by the mutations of androgen receptor (AR) gene located on chromosome Xq11-12. The mode of inheritance is hemizygous, where males get severely affected and females remain as carriers.Objective and hypotheses: Here, we describe the Phenotype–Genotype correlation and gender identity of pubertal and post pubertal...