ESPE Abstracts

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory disease affecting children and adolescence. The traditional therapeutic options for AD, including emollients topically and immune modulatory agents systemically focusing on reducing skin inflammation and restoring the function of the epidermal barrier, are proven ineffective in many cases. Several studies have linked vitamin D supplementation with either a decreased risk to develop AD or a clinical improvement of the symptoms of...

Aim: This study aims to screen the genes/gene products associated with the polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and to predict any possible interactions among them with high confidence. These interactions networks could contribute to the better understanding of PCOS pathophysiology and help generate new hypothesesMethods: Systems medicine approach using STRING v10.5 database and confidence level 0.7, interactions networking.Results: We...

Backgound: Alopecia areata (AA) or Alopecia Totalis (AT) is an autoimmune disease directed at the hair follicle, either limited to patchy hair loss over the scalp (focalis), or as total loss of scalp hair (totalis) or as total loss of both scalp and body hair (universalis). Management can be challenging, and despite multiple treatment modalities, no therapy still stands. While localized AA may respond well to topical corticosteroids, many patients require more aggressive secon...

Background: Several studies have correlated Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ART) including classic IVF and Intacytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) with epigenetic alterations in the offspring that could have long lasting unfavorable metabolic effects. Proteomics, a state-of-the-art technology used for the identification of early biomarkers of disease, has already been implemented in the search of success in ART but not yet for such markers evaluation in offspring of ART.</p...

Background: Knowing the changes of cardiovascular risk factors (CRF) in relation to weight loss would be helpful to advise overweight children and their parents and to decide whether drugs should be prescribed in addition to lifestyle intervention.Objective and hypotheses: The aim of the study was to determine the degree of overweight reduction to improve CRFs in overweight children.Method: We studied changes of blood pressure (BP)...

Background: Cytochrome P450 side-chain cleavage enzyme (CYP11A1 gene) catalyses the conversion of cholesterol to pregnenolone in steroidogenic cells, the first step in the biosynthesis of all steroid hormones. SCC deficiency has been established as an autosomal recessive disorder caused by inactivating homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations in the CYP11A1 gene, with a wide phenotypic spectrum ranging from prematurity, complete underandrogenization and severe early-onset...

Background: The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis responds to several acute or chronic environmental stessors, including those of social stress.Objective and hypotheses: To assess the HPA axis acute response during mental stress and mobile phone call exposure in healthy adolescents through salivary cortisol measurements and to investigate the modulatory effect of baseline biochemical or low-inflammation markers during this response....

Background: Diabetic neuropathy is among the least recognized complications of diabetes, despite its significant negative impact on survival and quality of life. Characteristic neuronal alterations may occur subclinically early in the course of the disease, even in childhood. The prevalence of subclinical neuropathy in paediatric population ranges from 7.9 – 19% in different studies.Objective and hypotheses: Our objective was to study the prevalence...

Background: Diabetes is a recognised long term sequelae in childhood cancer survivors following bone marrow transplantation and total body irradiation (BMT/TBI), due to a combination of insulin deficiency and resistance.Aim: To characterise presentation, treatment and clinical course of diabetes in childhood leukaemia survivors post BMT/TBI.Method: A single centre retrospective case note review of diabetes post BMT/TBI identified f...

Background: Cataract as a chronic complication of diabetes is well established in the literature and the risk factors are also well known. However, rare cases of acute bilateral cataract have been reported, all of them happening relatively shortly after diagnosis in T1DM. While the pathophysiology of this phenomenon remains unclear – as a lot of different theories proposed so far with the most accepted being the osmotic stress induced oxidative damage – fail to expla...