ESPE Abstracts

Background: Telomere length at birth is a major determinant of telomere length at later ages, up into senescence. However, the prenatal setting of telomere length is poorly understood. Individuals born large are at lower risk for later-life disorders, such as diabetes, than those born small, a feature of their longer health span being a higher lean mass that provides more muscle strength and is already present in infancy.Objective and hypotheses: To asse...

Background: Excessive energy intake and rapid weight gain early in life are associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, hepatic steatosis and other features of the metabolic syndrome. The monoacylglycerol acyltransferase (MGAT) is an enzyme involved in an alternative pathway for triglyceride (TAG) synthesis and storage. It has been recently proposed to have potential implications in the pathogenesis of hepatic insulin resistance (IR).Objective: To understa...

Background: Muscle is key to glucose metabolism. Myogenesis is completed in early infancy, partly under the inhibitory control of myostatin, a myokine whose actions can be influenced by follistatin. Early lowering of myostatin actions is thus a potential strategy to reduce the risk for later diabetes.Objective and hypotheses: We performed a first screening of whether such lowering is among the natural mechanisms whereby some human infants augment their l...

Introduction: Down syndrome (DS) is a chromosomal disorder. Children with DS have different height and weight patterns compared to children without DS. The aim of our study was to compare anthropometric parameters (expressed in standard deviation score-SDS) of people with DS using charts for DS and population (P) charts.Materials and Methods: The study group consisted of 114 patients with DS (64 girls), aged 4 months – 36 years (average age: 8.2 yea...

Background: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has forced the authorities to impose a lockdown to minimize the risk of infection. This extreme and prolonged situation has caused changes in habits, dietary and glycemic control in children with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and Flash glucose monitoring (FGM) have allowed health care professionals to a remote control of the patients.Aim: The aim of the stu...

Background: Newborns admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) are exposed to multiple painful and stressful procedures. It is postulated that high pain exposure in the first weeks of life can have a long-lasting impact on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Assessment of the salivary cortisol (SC) is a useful method for non-invasive monitoring of baseline activity and stress response of HPA axis.Objective: An...

Introduction: Vitamin D-dependent rickets type I (OMIM # 264700) is a rare autosomical recessive disorder that affects vitamin-D metabolism characterized by severe hypocalcaemia with moderate hypophosphatemia. The most common form is type IA, caused by the mutation of gene coding for 1-alpha-hydroxylase (CYP27B1OMIM * 609506. 12q14) that converts the 25-OH-vitaminD in 1,25-OH-vitaminD.Case report: A 2.3 years female with...

Introduction: Noonan Syndrome (NS) is a genetic disorder caused by mutations in the RAS/MAPK pathway. The clinical phenotype is variable; however, short stature is present in more than 80% of cases. Several clinical trials have been conducted over the last decades using recombinant growth hormone (rhGH) in NS to treat short stature demonstrating efficacy and safety which lead to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approval in 2020.<stron...

Introduction: Despite the high detection rate of GNAS molecular defects, about 30% of patients with a clinical suspect of PHP/AHO still lack a confirming molecular diagnosis. Mutations in genes encoding proteins crucial for cAMP-mediated signaling have been recently detected in a small subset of patients negative for GNAS defects, showing a phenotypic overlap between PHP and Acrodysostosis.Clinical case pres...

Introduction: Pediatric obesity is an important public health problem. Exogenous obesity represents most cases; in some children, obesity is attributable to endocrine or genetic disorders. Genetic etiology should be considered in children with dysmorphic features, global developmental delay, early onset severe obesity (before 5 years), hyperphagia or severe obesity family history. Regardless of the etiology, treatment must begin with long-term lifestyle change...