ESPE Abstracts

Background: Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) is a rare group of congenital adrenal diseases with an estimated prevalence of about ten newly diagnosed patients in the Netherlands per year. Morbidity and mortality improved significantly in the last 20 years mainly due to improvement of multidisciplinary care and education of patients and parents. In the last years the role of the nurse practitioner (NP) as case manager in the care and follow up of patients with chronic disea...

Background: Solidarity-based healthcare systems face significant challenges due to the rising costs of new and highly expensive medicines for cancer and rare diseases. The Dutch government introduced the Coverage Lock (CL) policy in 2015 to restrict access to reimbursement for such drugs. The CL has raised controversy around its ethical acceptability. Some claim the CL is necessary to secure solidarity while others have pointed out that its leads to unfair ine...

Background & Aims: Children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) frequently receive high doses dexamethasone during treatment, which may induce acute side effects. The aims of the current study were to determine the influence of a five-day dexamethasone course on changes in leptin, fat mass, body mass index (BMI), hunger, sleep and fatigue and to explore the associations between these changes.Methods: Pediatric AL...

Background: Recently, a national database has been developed to register yearly data from all children detected with CAH in the neonatal screening program from 2002 onwards. So far longitudinal data of 105 children have been registered (roughly 65% of Dutch CAH patients) to evaluate medical treatment and long-term effects in CAH. A national CAH work group developed guidelines for diagnostics and follow up in CAH.Objective and hypotheses: Aim of our curre...

Context: Supra-physiological exogenous corticosteroids used during the last months of pregnancy may lead to temporary neonatal adrenal suppression. Little is known about the outcome of neonates from mothers who used corticosteroids during pregnancy.Objective: The evaluation of clinical symptoms and biochemical findings of adrenal suppression in neonates from mothers using corticosteroids during pregnancy.<p class="ab...

Background: Early-onset obesity is associated with genetic obesity disorders. According to the Endocrine Society guideline for paediatric obesity, genetic screening is indicated in selected cases with age of onset (AoO) of obesity <5 years. However, this cut-off value lacks evidence. Identifying genetic obesity is vital as treatment for leptin-melanocortin pathway disorders becomes available. We aimed to determine whether AoO of obesity is predictive for g...

Background: Testicular Adrenal Rest Tumours (TARTs) are benign tumours that frequently occur in male patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. They exhibit both testicular and adrenal characteristics, but their aetiology is unknown. Additionally, TART resembles Leydig cell tumours (LCTs), while no marker exist to discriminate between these testis tumours. GATA transcription factors play an important role in eukaryotic development and are expressed in foetal and adult adren...

Background: Children with obesity show differences in brain structure, executive function and appetitive traits when compared to lean peers. Results of imaging studies, however, have been contradictory.Objective and hypotheses: To investigate whether childhood obesity is associated with differences in brain structure and whether differences associate with executive function and appetitive traits.Method: A cross-sectional case-contr...

Background: Prediction models demonstrate potential in predicting growth in patients receiving recombinant human growth hormone (r-hGH) for growth disorders. However, considerable information from patients is needed to calculate a predicted growth curve. The curve matching technique only requires height data. This technique identifies growth curves that are similar (matched) among real-world patients within a database. The growth curves of these ‘matched...

Poor adherence to long-term growth hormone (GH) treatment can lead to suboptimal clinical outcomes. The easypod™ connect eHealth platform enables healthcare professionals to obtain an accurate picture of real-world adherence by allowing patients to transmit adherence data to a database. Our aims were to assess adherence to r-hGH (Saizen, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) treatment with the easypod connect platform in children from treatment start to 48 months and to investi...