ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Cortisol homeostasis dysregulation has been associated to essential hypertension in adults. Higher levels of cortisol have been described in preterm-born individuals, who have also a higher risk of hypertension at younger ages. Several enzymes modulate peripheric cortisol metabolism. The 11b-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (11b-HSD) type 2 metabolizes cortisol into cortisone, preventing mineralocorticoid receptors’ activation by cortisol. The i...

Background: Congenital Hypopituitarism (CH) is a rare heterogeneous genetic disorder characterized by the deficiency of pituitary hormones. CH can be associated with extra pituitary phenotypes such as midline craniofacial malformations. To date, a minority of patients carry pathogenic variants in more than 30 genes, and thus more than 80% of cases remain unresolved.Objective: To identify de novo pathogenic variants in no...

Background: Short stature is one of the most common conditions referred to pediatric endocrinology clinics, and treatment with growth hormone (GH) is useful to improve height velocity and adult height, but response may be variable. Growth hormone therapy is indicated in several conditions in pediatric patients, including growth hormone deficiency (GHD) and children born short for gestational age (SGA). We investigated differences in treatment response in Indon...

Background: Somapacitan is a reversible albumin-binding growth hormone (GH) derivative developed for once-weekly administration in patients with GH deficiency (GHD). It consists of a human GH backbone, similar to endogenous human GH, with one amino acid substitution, attached to an albumin binder via a linker chain.Objective: Absorption, metabolism and excretion (AME) of somapacitan were investigated in a Phase 1 trial (...

Introduction: Of any pituitary dysfunction following brain injury, growth hormone (GH) deficiency (GHD) is the most prevalent. The cut-point for defining GHD has been placed at 7 ng/mL representing optimum test performance. We hypothesised this cut-off may be set too low for genetically taller children with acquired brain injury, notably brain tumours, who demonstrate severe growth failure but repeatedly fail to meet diagnostic thresholds for GH replacement until several centi...

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in obese children is a diagnostic challenge. Presently recommended markers of liver steatosis and risk of progression to fibrosis are: ultrasound imaging (US) and liver aminotransferases (ALT and AST). Owing to the poor sensitivity of these tests, there is a need to search for biomarkers which could indicate early stages of NAFLD. The enhanced liver fibrosis test (ELF) based on the combination of serum concentration of hyal...

Introduction: Salivary androgens represent a non-invasive marker of puberty that may have utility in population studies as well as in the clinical arena.Objectives: To establish normal reference values of salivary androgens using LC-MS/MS and demonstrate the correlations between salivary androgens and pubertal development in boys.Methods: School-based adolescent cohort study with t...

Background: 16p11.2 microdeletion is most common chromosomal anomaly associated with syndromic obesity. The presence of a large number of flanking segmental duplications/low-copy repeat sequences with a high degree of sequence identity in the short arm of chromosome 16 (16p) leads to recurrent deletions and duplications as a consequence of non-allelic homologous recombination. A recurrent 600kb microdeletion is one of the most frequent genomic imbalances in 16...

Objective: Recent studies have suggested earlier onset of pubertal development in boys. As assessment with orchidometer tends to overestimate true testicular volume (TV), and measurements based on ultrasound (US) have been proposed as a more reliable method, we present US based references in 6-16 year-old Norwegian boys. Our results are compared with data from Europe and the United States (U.S.) in order to establish evidence for an ongoing secular trend in ma...

Background: Maternal overweight/obesity during pregnancy and excessive gestational weight gain (GWtG) have been recognized as important early-life risk factors for childhood obesity. We aimed to examine whether maternal BMI at 20 weeks of gestation and excessive GWtG were associated with alterations in body composition and metabolism in childhood in the offspring of primiparous mothers who participated in a randomised controlled trial of exercise regimen during pregnancy.<...