ESPE Abstracts

The new care paradigm for DSD promoted by the Chicago Consensus of 2005 raised many psychological challenges, the most important being the way decisions regarding the sex of rearing and diagnosis communication are made. The traditional care paradigm, sustained by a binary sex categorization, suggested that for newborns, the decision about the sex of rearing should be made as soon as possible and no later than 18 months of life and that little should be said to the involved per...

Background: Despite having a significant impact on patient care and treatment success, nurses’ roles and responsibilities in growth disorder (GD) treatment varies substantially between countries and should be optimised.Objective and hypotheses: To understand the critical role nurses play in patient clinical outcomes and how they can improve the patient management pathway.Methods: Nurses involved in the care of patients with GD...

Thyroid dysgenesis (TD) is the most common cause of congenital hypothyroidism in iodine sufficient regions. TD includes a broad spectrum of developmental anomalies varying from absence of thyroid (athyreosis) to an abnormally located thyroid (ectopy), small (hypoplasia) or asymmetric thyroid. Thyroid dysgenesis is usually sporadic, but up to 2% of cases is familial. Genetics of TD is complex and advances in developmental biology over the past two decades revealed monogenetic f...

Background: GH deficiency (GHD) is classically defined on the basis of a cut-off applied to the peak GH level during stimulation tests; a process with recognised limitations. Identifying the functional role of genes whose expression is associated with pGH may help with our understanding and classification of GHD.Objective and hypotheses: Identify patterns of gene expression (GE) related to pGH and to describe the function, and regulation of these genes.<...

Background: The European Programme on Cooperation of Science and Technology (COST) funds the formation of networking activities. These are especially favorable for research around rare diseases, because experts and scientists maybe at different centres and an international collaboration is needed.In November of 2013 the COST Action DSDnet was started. Currently 18 different European countries are participating and countries from all continents have voice...

Background: The Easypod Connect Observational Study (ECOS) observational study follows children with GHD, SGA and Turner syndrome receiving r-hGH therapy for up to 5 years, with interim analyses each year. The easypod electromechanical auto-injector device enables accurate, real-world digital records of patients’ adherence to rhGH to be collected for evaluation.Objective and hypotheses: The primary objective of ECOS is to evaluate the level of adher...

Background: Prader Willi Syndrome (PWS) patients under treatment with growth hormone (GH) have a better body composition and cognitive performance than untreated patients. The 2013 guideline recommended to start this treatment as soon as possible, for that reason 14 toddlers have been included in our center. Classically a 25% decrease in the caloric intake of PWS patients has been recommended to avoid obesity. However, from clinical practice observation, w...

Background: Growth charts constitute an important tool to monitor a child’s growth and development, and thus detect growth anomalies. Growth assessment allows early referral and management of treatable disorders. In France, the currently used growth reference charts were derived at the end of 1970s, based on children born on 1950s in Paris area. Questions are raised about their use for growth monitoring of more recently born children.Objectives: To ...

High-throughput biomolecular (omic) analyses enabled the simultaneous quantification of hundreds or thousands of transcripts, proteins, metabolites in a biological system, contributing to the identification of discriminatory multi-component molecular profiles of a pathophysiology. Molecular quantities being interconnected, even subtle differences in one can carry significance if viewed in the context of the observed changes in the rest of the molecules. We can now view molecul...

Human growth is a complex trait. A considerable number of gene defects have been shown to cause short stature, but there are only few examples of genetic causes of non-syndromic tall stature. Besides rare variants with large effects and common risk alleles with small effect size, oligogenic effects may contribute to this phenotype. Exome sequencing was carried out in a tall male (height 3.5 SDS) and his parents. Filtered damaging variants with high CADD scores were validated b...