ESPE Abstracts

SARS-CoV- 2 pandemic induced to develop new strategies to abate the distance between patients, families and paediatricians, especially in cases of patients who need long-term therapies. Furthermore, the need to minimize the inflow of children and adolescents affected by chronic diseases into the hospitals induced paediatric endocrinologists to limit visits and to consider a new setting to assist children in treatment with growth hormone (GH). Telemedicine and smart-working cou...

Background: Vitamin D insufficiency is more frequent than expected also in Western Europe, however the relieve of a ‘health’ child with rickets is uncommon in Caucasians.Objective and hypotheses: Explain clinical severity by a genetic background.Method: We describe the clinical case of a 2.5-year-old girl with skeletal deformities. She was 86.5 cm (10° Cent), 12.5 kg (3–10° Cent); PH1B1. She showed typical ...

Background: Lipodystrophy syndromes comprise a large group of extremely rare diseases characterized by loss or dysfunction of adipose tissue. Due to their extreme rarity and variability, research in the field of lipodystrophy is difficult for single centres warranting larger co-operations.Methods: Therefore, the European Consortium of Lipodystrophies decided to found an international registry in 2016. This registry is ba...

Obesity, with its complications, emerges as a major contributor to the global health burden becoming pandemic. It's an extremely complex disorder resulting of interaction of biological, social and behavioural factors that cause increase in food intake and reduction in energy expenditure. Although few monogenic forms and indeed several susceptibility loci have been described, the molecular basis underlying early onset obesity remain largely unknown. GWAS revealed consistent...

Background: Disorders related to an impairment in parathyroid hormone (PTH) signaling pathway are historically classified under the term pseudohypoparathyroidism (PHP), that now encompasses rare, related but highly heterogeneous diseases with demonstrated (epi)genetic causes. The actual classification is based on the presence or absence of specific clinical and biochemical signs together with an in vivo response to exogenous PTH and an in vitro assay of Gs&#9...

Background and aim: Congenital growth hormone deficiency (cGHD) is a rare but life-threatening condition whose diagnosis is challenging in the absence of reliable reference values, both in healthy neonates and in preterm ones. We recently estimated GH reference interval in 1036 healthy, at-term newborns (HN) form dried blood spot samples using a previously validated analytical method.Aim: of this study is to provide valu...

Systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (sJIA) is a chronic autoinflammatory disease, with significant complications that can give short-term and long-term disability with reduced quality of life. Growth delay and short stature are described in >40% of cases, with a complex pathogenesis. Chronic inflammation, long-term corticosteroids treatment, hepatic involvement, malnutrition decrease IGF-1 and GH biological effects. Corticosteroids inhibit growth velocity, bone maturatio...

SHOX haploinsufficiency (SHOX-D) is a genetic cause of disharmonic short stature. However, the different impact on phenotype can show differences between patients with the same genotype.GH ameliorates final height, with significant differences between patients for the putative role of environmental factors who can influence growth.We describe the case of two sisters with SHOX-D (target height: 146.8 cm (-2.6SDS); mother: 146.5 cm; ...

SHOX haploinsufficiency (SHOX-D) is a cause of disharmonic short stature and a possible genetic cause of idiopathic short stature also in familial cases. We describe clinical, hormonal and genetic characteristics of patients with SHOX-D haploinsufficiency, followed and treated in the period 2014–2017, in a single Italian centre. The Rappold score was used to screen short children, to select those who needed a genetic analysis of SHOX gene by MLPA and sequencing. We select...

Background: Chromosomal imbalances are often due to sub microscopic deletions or duplications not evidenced by conventional cytogenetic methods.Objective and hypotheses: CGH array can help in the diagnosis of severe short stature, associated with mental retardation and dysmorphisms.Method: We describe the clinical case of a 13.1-year-old girl, born at 35 weeks, from a triplets pregnancy. She was 127.5 cm (<−5 SDS), 33 kg ...