ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

To read the full abstract: Development 2017;144:3289-3302Aberrant development of the anterior pituitary can lead to congenital hypopituitarism (CH) in humans and hence understanding how this organ develops is critical to understand CH. The anterior pituitary develops in intimate contact with the prospective hypothalamus, which secretes growth factors that are required for the pituitary gland to grow...

To read the full abstract: Diabetes 2017;66:1713-1722This study examined whether genetic variants predisposing to T2DM exert their influence on disease via changes in DNA methylation in a young, non-diabetic, cross-sectional cohort. The examination of young subjects who are disease-free enables exploration of SNP-methylation relationships without assessing methylation differences that result from rev...

To read the full abstract: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019, Dec 3; 116: 24480-5. doi: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6900519/pdf/pnas.201909367.pdfIn a large sample of 317 US American transgender children aged 3–12 years, the authors compared gender outcomes of transgender children with cisgender peers. They also assessed whether the time ...

To read the full abstract: Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2018; 115(51): 12997–13002.Humans are constantly challenged by multiple stressors, to which the body’s response and adaptation are essential. The adrenal gland plays a major role in the response to both physiological challenges and stress. Maintenance of the adrenal is partly accomplished by proliferation and differentiat...

Brief summary: This study evaluated the ability of genetic risk scores to predict severe obesity in adult survivors of childhood cancer. Data from 2548 survivors of European ancestry from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study was analyzed and findings were validated in 6064 survivors from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. Survivors with higher genetic risk scores had significantly higher odds of severe obesity. Adding genetic risk scores to prediction models that included canc...

JCI Insight. 2020 Oct 27;5(23):e134310. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.134310. PMID: 33108146.Lodge et al. screened 28 patients with pituitary stalk interruption syndrome (PSIS) for mutations in the FAT/DCHS (FAT atypical cadherin/ Dachsous cadherin-related) family of protocadherins. FAT2 and DCHS2 putative damaging variants were found in 6/28 patients with ectopic ...

J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2021 Jan 23;106(2):351–363. doi: 10.1210/clinem/dgaa857. PMID: 33236116.Here, the authors report the long−term outcomes of all 17 known, well−investigated cases of pituitary blastoma. The median age at diagnosis was 11 months, and the most frequent presentations were Cushing syndrome (n=10), cranial nerve palsies including ophthalmoplegia (...

To read the full abstract: Nature Communications, 2019; 10 (1); 662This paper highlights the brain as a key target for growth hormone (GH) signaling affecting mostly energy conservation. To identify GH response neurons, C57BL/6 mice received intraperitoneal injection of saline or GH and their brains were processed to detect the phosphorylation of pSTAT5 as a marker of GH receptor a...

To read the full abstract: Pediatr Diabetes. 2018 May;19(3):388-392Mutations in FOXP3 are associated with a severe, early-onset, autoimmunity syndrome known in males known as IPEX (immune dysregulation, polyendocrinopathy, enteropathy, X-linked; OMIM [Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man] 304930). The gene maps to chromosome Xp11.23 and encodes a 431–amino acid protein, also named &#8216...

In Brief: This comprehensive review classifies the known high bone mass (HBM) disorders based on Gene Ontology (GO) nomenclature. The authors emphasize the importance of functional genomics in the discovery of new HBM genes and discuss strategies to improve understanding of the underlying pathogenic mechanisms and inform the development of therapeutic approaches.Commentary: HBM disorders are typically defined by a high areal bone marrow density (BMD) <em...