ESPE Abstracts

Background: DMRT transcription factors are highly conserved regulators of metazoan sexual development. The role of DMRT1 in human primary sex-determination is unclear. Chromosome 9p deletions that remove one copy of DMRT1 are associated with 46,XY feminization and gonadal dysgenesis. While they suggest that DMRT1 is haploinsufficient for testicular development, these deletions usually remove other genes, including DMRT2 and DMRT3. Also, most 9p deletions cause incomplete gonad...

Background: In humans, the GHN gene transcription is under the control of a Locus Control Region (LCR) enhancer, HSI, located 14.5 kb 5′ to the hGHN promoter. POU1F1, a pituitary-specific transcription factor, plays an essential role in the specification of the somatotroph, lactotroph and thyrotroph lineages and the activation of GHN, PRL and TSH gene transcription. All POU1F1 mutations so far reported have been linke...

Background: Pediatric thyroid cancer has characteristics that are distinct from adulthood thyroid cancer. Due to its very low prevalence, little is known about the genetic characteristics of pediatric follicular thyroid cancer (FTC).Methods: We investigated genetic alterations in tumor tissues from 15 patients aged < 20 years (median: 14.3 years; range: 2.4-19.0 years) using multifaceted approaches. Whole-exome seque...

Background: Cytochrome P450 oxidoreductase (POR) deficiency (PORD) is a form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and results in steroid-production loss from cytochrome P450 proteins. Mutations in POR cause mild to severe forms of CAH with/without bone malformation symptoms resembling Antley-Bixler syndrome. We report a novel POR Arg550Trp mutation identified in a 46,XX patient with signs of aromatase (ARO) deficiency. Child (first pregnancy) and mother pr...

Introduction: PMM2-CDG is the most common congenital disorder of glycosylation (CDG). Since glycoproteins are involved in every endocrine axis, PMM2-CDG patients have a high risk of developing endocrinopathies.Case report: We describe two 12 years-old female PMM2-CDG patients with severe short stature and no clinical sign of puberty. One patient showed low serum levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and IGF bind...

Current hormone substitution therapy of patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is suboptimal and cannot mimic physiological daily rhythms of hormone secretion. As supra-physiological corticoid doses are necessary to avoid adrenal androgen excess, patients show substantially increased comorbidities such as hyperglycemia, arterial hypertension, reduced growth and osteoporosis. Moreover plasma ACTH is often inadequately suppressed, resulting in undesired excess adrena...

Background: Childhood obesity has been a worrisome public health issues today. Recent studies conducted in adult populations and animals have suggested beneficial effects of probiotics on obesity, while, the experience is limited in the pediatric age group and the results are conflict.Object: The primary objective was to determine the effect of Probiotics consumption on weight change. The secondary objective was to deter...

Background: The fundamental challenge of developing a long-acting growth hormone (LAGH) is to create a more convenient growth hormone (GH) dosing profile while retaining the excellent safety, efficacy, and tolerability of daily GH. With GH receptors on virtually all cells, replacement therapy should achieve the same tissue distribution and effects of daily (and endogenous) GH while maintaining levels of GH and resulting IGF1 within the physiologic range....

Background: Recently, patients with severe obesity have been described due to functional leptin deficiency. This new entity is characterized by high immunoreactive levels of circulating leptin (Lep), but a reduced bioactivity of the hormone due to defective receptor binding (N Engl J Med 2015;372:48–54). Since these patients can be successfully treated with human recombinant leptin (metreleptin), a diagnostic tool to detect functional leptin deficiency is needed.<p cl...

Background: The steroidogenic Factor 1 (SF1, NR5A1) is one of the key factors involved in gonadal and adrenal development and steroidogenesis. Until now, over 50 mutations were described in different phenotypes of XY disorders of sex development (DSD) such as complete gonadal dysgenesis, severe and mild partial gonadal dysgenesis, hypospadias, infertility and bilateral anorchia. So far, no genotype-phenotype correlation could be demonstrated.Objective an...