ESPE Abstracts

Background: Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is a common and preventable cause of mental retardation in children, and is detected using dried blood spots in many neonatal screening programs. Upon suspicion of CH, plasma free thyroxine (FT4) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) concentrations are measured. CH can be of thyroidal or central origin (CH-T and CH-C, respectively). While CH-T diagnosis is based on an elevated plasma TSH in combination with a low FT4,...

Background: Patients with a mutation in the thyroid hormone (TH) receptor TRα1 are characterized by growth retardation, delayed bone development, mild cognitive defects and constipation. They also have abnormal TH levels: low FT4, high T3, and low rT3 levels, suggesting an altered peripheral TH metabolism by deiodinases. The type 3 deiodinase (D3) inactivates TH by catalyzing the degradation of T3. D3 is importantly expressed in...

Background: Measurement of testicular volume is important when conditions associated with a delay or advance in the onset of puberty, or micro- and macroorchidism, are suspected. Measured testicular volumes must be compared with reference data, preferably expressed in S.D. curves using the LMS method, as is routinely done for many auxological measurements in pediatrics. The current study therefore aimed to construct LMS-smoothed age-reference charts for testicul...

Background: Short stature caused by point mutations or deletions of the short stature homeobox (SHOX) gene (SHOX haploinsufficiency, SHI) is a registered indication for growth hormone (GH) treatment. Patients with a SHOX enhancer deletion (SED) have a similar phenotype, but their response to GH is unknown. It is uncertain if duplications of SHOX or its enhancer (SDUP) can cause short stature.Objective and hypotheses: To describe the clinical characterist...

Background: Although motor performance is often impaired in patients with Turner syndrome, the exact prevalence of motor problems is unknown. Detailed studies on specific motor profiles are lacking and the exact relationship between performal IQ and motor function is unknown.Aims and objectives: 1. To describe motor performance in our population of children and adolescents with Turner syndrome including the differentiation in specific motor skill domains...

Background: Thyroidectomy is a definitive treatment option in some benign thyroid disorders and the definitive treatment option for thyroid cancer. As postoperative mortality is extremely rare data on postoperative complications and long-term health consequences are important.Objective: To evaluate the frequencies of short- and long-term complications, and their risk factors in pediatric patients (0-18 years) who underwent a thyroidectomy in a tertiary c...

Background: Paediatric obesity is a multifactorial disease characterized by an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure. In rare cases, obesity is caused by underlying medical disorders arising from disruptions in the leptin-melanocortin pathway, which regulates satiety and energy expenditure.Aim: To investigate resting energy expenditure (REE) in relation to body composition in children and adolescents with sever...

Background: Heterozygous pathogenic variants in the ACAN gene underlie disproportionate short stature with characteristically accelerated bone age (BA) maturation and/or osteochondritis dissecans (OD)/early-onset osteoarthritis (OA).Objective: To describe the phenotypic spectrum and assess the response and safety of growth hormone (GH) treatment in children with a heterozygous pathogenic ACAN variant.</...

Introduction: Childhood craniopharyngioma (cCP) has excellent survival, but quality of life may be severely hampered by hypothalamic dysfunction. We aimed to evaluate treatment and hypothalamic outcomes of a Dutch cCP cohort, and evaluate the effect of centralization of care.Methods: A retrospective cohort study was performed, including cCP patients diagnosed between 2004-2021. Treatment characteristics and hypothalamic ...

Introduction: Patients carrying homozygous IGF1 loss-of-function mutations are extremely rare and show severe pre- and postnatal growth failure, microcephaly, developmental delay, retrognathia and sensorineural deafness. Heterozygous variants in IGF1 appear to be more common in short stature, but only few cases have been reported in detail. Therefore, clinical features and growth response to recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) therapy are...