ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

Hum Mol Genet. 2020 Dec 18;29(20): 3443–3450.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33089319/The authors performed an experimental study in Kiss1 knock-out mice, followed by an observational study of patients with adrenal tumors. The findings indicate that KISS1/KISS1R signaling may be involved in obesity, metabolic disorders and even gonadal steroid hormone perturbations.<p class="abstex...

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...

Brief Summary: this case-control study shows that the common genetic variants that influence pubertal timing in the general population also contribute to constitutional delay of puberty (CDP) and less significantly to normosmic idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (IHH).CDP and IHH are two different conditions that are notoriously difficult to distinguish clinically on initial presentation. Because CDP has clear heritability traits1, and h...

Brief Summary: this large patient cohort study identified an overrepresentation of functionally damaging variants in MC3R in individuals with constitutional delay of growth and puberty but not in patients with IHH.Melanocortin 3 receptor (MC3R) is a permissive signal expressed by hypothalamic kisspeptin-neurokinin B-dynorphin (KNDY) neurons. It activates puberty through the leptin-proopiomelanocortin pathway in response to nutritional signaling<...