ESPE Abstracts

Background: Type 1 diabetes mellitus (1DM) is a common chronic disease of childhood. Treatment targets the best metabolic control in order to prevent long-term complications.Objective: To evaluate metabolic control in children and adolescents with 1DM along the years. Methods: Retrospective study including 1DM children and adolescents with more than 2 years of disease. Data were collected at 2005 and at 2012: sex, age at diagnosis, therapy in the last ye...

Background: The phenotypic spectrum of short stature homeobox-containing gene deficiency disorders (SHOX-D) ranges from non-specific short stature to Leri-Weill dyschondrosteosis. Current guidelines support rhGH in SHOX-D children, but long-term data are still lacking. Moreover, no correlation has been established yet between the severity of phenotype, including the response to rhGH, and the underlying SHOX pathogenic variant.Aims: To ev...

Background: Congenital hypopituitarism (CH) genetics is highly heterogeneous. The massive use of NGS identified at least 21 desease causing genes. Not fully understood inheritance mechanism, incomplete penetrance and variable expressivity explain the complexity of phenotype-genotype correlations. To further complicate the scenario, the co-occurence of more than one desease-causing genes variants can geopardize the phenotype. Herein, we report the heterogeneous...

Background: Adrenal insufficiency (AI) is a rare condition caused by an inadequate production of glucocorticoids. Preliminary data in adults suggest that AI could be associated with an increased susceptibility to infections; moreover, AI patients are at risk to develop a severe course of infectious diseases and to experience a life-threatening adrenal crisis. The aim of our study is to evaluate the severity and the outcome of COVID-19 in pediatric AI patients ...

Introduction: Central precocious puberty (CPP) is due to premature activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis. Mutations in the imprinted gene MKRN3 are the most common monogenic form of CPP. Recently, attention was directed to DLK1, another imprinted gene. Defects in this gene resulted to be a rare cause of CPP in girls and adult women with precocious menarche, obesity and metabolic derangement. We aimed to investigate a cohort of female and male p...

Objectives: Subclinical hypothyroidism (SH) is the most common thyroid abnormality in Down Syndrome (DS) children (25-60%); its etiology remains still not completely clarified. Aim of this prospective multicenter study was to evaluate prevalence and natural course of autoimmune and non-autoimmune SH in a large cohort of DS children and adolescents.Methods: The study population included 101 DS patients with SH (TSH 5-...

Background: The primary goal of GH treatment in GHD children and adolescents is to normalize height, in order to attain an adult height within the target height (TH) range.Aim: to investigate height improvement in GHD paediatric patients treated with GH in our Country.Subjects: 737 patients with isolated GHD (39.5% females) from 13 tertiary Centres for Paediatric Endocrine Care...

Diagnosis of craniopharyngiomas in childhood is often delayed due to nonspecific symptoms. In Italy all children are followed-up by paediatricians of the NHS and paediatric endocrinologists are present throughout the country. This would theoretically lead to an early diagnosis. We aimed to examine the clinical picture at diagnosis and duration of history before diagnosis in 117 patients (pts) followed-up at Endocrinology Centres belonging to the I.S.P.E.D..<p class="abstex...

Background: Primary adrenal insufficiency (PAI) is a rare life-threatening disorder. Data on PAI in children are scanty, with the exception of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) due to 21-hydroxylase deficiency (21OHD).Objective and hypotheses: Evaluate etiology of PAI in a large cohort of children and characterize clinical presentation in subjects with PAI not due to 21-OHD.Method: Children followed in eight tertiary centers wer...

Background: Recently, mutations in the maternally imprinted MKRN3 gene have been associated to familial idiopathic central precocious puberty (iPPC). The clinical phenotype and the frequency of these mutations are poorly described.Objective and hypotheses: Delineate the frequency of MKRN3 mutations in iPPC and perform a genotype–phenotype correlation in MKRN3 mutated patients.Method: 59 index cases with iPPC have been included...