ESPE Abstracts

Background: Due to fewer girls than boys being GH-treated, after 50yrs the knowledge about sex-differences in both GH-response and GH-responsiveness before and during puberty remains limited.Aim: To describe factors explaining growth response to GH-treatment, separately in girls and boys from GHstart to adult height (AH).Methods: Children diagnosed with IGHD/ISS/SGA from GH-SAFETY-...

Background: Type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents is a rare disease with an estimated incidence (age 0–20 years) of below 5/100 000 in Germany.Objective and Hypotheses: We hypothesize that monogenic alterations might contribute to early-onset insulin secretion defects, if islet function was challenged by obesity-associated insulin resistance.Method: We follow more than 1500 children and adolescents with obesity. Patients...

Background: Cardiovascular diseases are most relevant for morbidity and mortality in obese patients. Because metabolic complications already start in childhood obesity one may expect an early manifestation of cardiovascular disease in this group as young adults. In adults fetuin A was shown to promote adipocyte inflammation and metabolic syndrome and subsequently vascular damage.Objective and hypotheses: We evaluated the role of fetuin A in the vascular ...

Background: The hypothalamic leptin–melanocortin signalling pathway is a critical regulator of human appetite and weight regulation. Monogenetic defects in the POMC gene, the MSH ligand generating PC1 gene and the MSH receptor gene MC4R lead to severe early onset and leptin-resistant obesity. In PWS, where the function of genes such as MAGEL2 are impaired, the Magel2-/- mouse model revealed decreased POMC neuronal functioning as one c...

Cancer treatment may result in development of long-term endocrine complications, including growth hormone (GH) deficiency.1 Although extensive and careful monitoring has been carried out to establish the safety profile of GH therapy,2 a relative scarcity of data means that questions persist around its use in survivors of childhood cancer. The effects of GH on growth and metabolism mean that there is a particular interest in whether GH therapy increases th...

Background and Aim: Despite the broad individual variation of pubertal maturation, references traditionally describe growth in relation to just chronological age and not biological age. Hence, growth references for the adolescent period have been of limited usefulness for monitoring individual growth in clinic and for research. Especially for children and adolescents with chronic diseases is there a need to better evaluate if changes in SD-scores just before a...

Background/Aim: Parents wanting to predict adult height (AH) often resort to the old practice of doubling a boy’s height at age 2 years or a girl’s height at 18 months. We coined this the ’Grandma prediction’ (GMP1). It provides predictions with mean absolute error (MAE) 5.9 and 5.2, standard deviations of residuals (sdRES) 4.1 and 3.6, and Pearson correlation r=0.68 and 0.67 for boys and girls, respectively. The recent sophist...

Objective: Patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) seldom achieve their target height. Early adrenarche may accelerate bone age maturation and affect adult height. The QEPS-growth-model have been used for developing growth references and investigating healthy/pathological growth, however, not before used in individuals with endocrine disorders. This study aimed to evaluate growth patterns in CAH-patients with the QEPS-model.<s...

Background/Aim: The trade-off theory claims that a resource (calorie) stored in adipose tissue cannot be used for longitudinal growth, and a calorie used for growth will not be stored as fat.Methods: Out of 2339 children with longitudinal heights and weights (birth to adulthood) from the GrowUp1990 Gothenburg cohort, 1993 (996 girls) were analyzed. For everyone we calculated Energy Trade-Off Score: ETOS = at early adulth...

Background: Height references have been available for decades, although only related to chronological age and not considering the broad individual variation in the timing and tempo of pubertal maturation and growth. Therefore, growth references and growth charts for the adolescent period have been of limited usefulness both for monitoring growth in individuals and for research. To fill this gap, we recently developed a new type of height reference based on gro...