ESPE Abstracts

Background: Children born small-for-gestational-age (SGA) have a birth weight below 2,500 g at a gestational age over 37 weeks or a birth weight or length below the 3-rd percentile for gestational age. They usually recover growth during the first 6–12 months of life, but if not so, it is unlikely the recovery to happen after the age of two unless GH replacement therapy is initiated.Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the 1-st year growt...

Background: Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a T cell-mediated autoimmune disease. A more complex immunological picture is being unraveled, with a key role of innate immune cells at disease onset and maintenance. For new therapies based on immune-modulation to be possible, immune characterization of T1D patients is crucial.Objective and hypotheses: We aimed to characterise innate and adaptive immune cells of T1D children at a well-defined ‘onset-window&#146...

Background: Some IGFALS variants have been reported in more than one ALS-deficient family raising the question whether they originated from a single common ancestor allele (founder effect) or alternatively, as independent mutational events (hot spot). Since c.103dupG (p.E35Gfs*17) is located in a stretch of five consecutive guanine residues, where both G-duplication and deletion have been described in several families, we speculate that this region could be a hot spot...

Background: Sotos syndrome is characterized by overgrowth. The four mayor criteria for diagnosis are: overgrowth (accelerated bone age), macrocephaly, characteristic facial features and developmental delay. They can also present escoliosis, heart or genitourinary disease, seizures, hypotonia, cerebral malformations, feeding difficulties, hearing loss and a greater risk of tumours.Case report: A 10 months old girl was referred for overgrowth. BW and BL wa...

Background: Primary ovarian failure (POF) is a major cause of female infertility. POF is characterized by amenorrhea, hypo-estrogenism, and elevated gonadotrophin levels. In POF disorder, several genetic alterations have been described, however in most of the patients the etiology of this disorder remains unknown.Objective and hypotheses: To identify new genes implicated in the development of POF using whole-exome sequencing (WES)....

Due to the increase in prevalence of childhood obesity, more obese children are referred to the endocrinologist for the hypothalamus-hypophysis-adrenal axis assessment. The circadian rhythm (CR) of cortisol in saliva (SAF) may constitute a non-invasive, first line test to exclude hypercortisolism on obese children.Aim: To evaluate possible disturbances of CR of SAF in obese children with clinical signs of hypercortisolism.<p class="a...

Background: The human growth pattern varies from intrauterine to extrauterine life, with the GH-IGF axis being immature at birth and IGF-I assuming an important role in promoting postnatal growth. The actions of IGF-I are modulated by its interactions with IGFBPs, with this interaction being regulated by pappalysins (PAPP-A, PAPP-A2) and stanniocalcins (STC-1, STC-2), and thus modifying the amount of free IGF-I.Objective:</strong...

Introduction: Age at pubertal onset is a markedly inherited trait. The most common cause of pubertal delay, self-limited pubertal delay, is defined by the absence of secondary sexual characteristics after 13 years in girls and 14 years in boys, with progression before age 18. This study aimed to detect novel candidate genes for self-limited pubertal delay.Methods: Eighty-one patients with confirmed self-limited delayed p...

Body Mass Index (BMI) has a high association with body fat percentage and direct association with a higher degree of comorbidities. Categorizing patients only by the degree of obesity, as has been done over time, restricts the possibility of detecting and giving timely treatment to other aspects. The Edmonton Obesity Staging System for Pediatrics (EOSS-P) has been proposed as a tool to categorize obesity not only by BMI, but also by assessing metabolic complications, functiona...

Introduction: McCune-Albright Syndrome (MAS) is a rare congenital disorder caused by post-zygotic activating mutations in GNAS gene. Due to the mosaic pattern of this disease, mutation abundance is frequently low in several tissues, including blood cells. The emergence of next-generation sequencing (NGS) methodologies has allowed the analysis of millions of DNA fragments simultaneously and independently, enabling detection of low mutation abundance. Aim: To es...