Endocrine Abstracts

During the infantile-pubertal transition, a diversity of behavioral, physiological, morphological and molecular changes are required in order to attain fertility. An essential step in this process is the reactivation of the pituitary-gonadal axis by increased hypothalamic secretion of Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone (GnRH). This drives the adenohypophysis to increase the pulsatile release of luteinizing hormone (LH) with diurnal periodicity, the first endocrine sign of pubertal...

IntroductionDiabetes, a metabolic disorder characterized by abnormal blood glucose levels, is a serious chronic disease that implies an important public health problem. Being Insulin the main hormone for modulating blood glucose levels, subcutaneous injections are the main way for its administration in the diabetes treatment. However, this way of administration can lead to poor patient compliance, apart from several side-effects. Although other ways of a...

A prevailing concept regarding the mechanism controlling the timing of puberty proposes that GnRH release from the hypothalamus increases at puberty due to a loss of transsynaptic inhibition, accompanied by an increase in neuronal/glial excitatory inputs to GnRH neurons. Without negating the importance of this intercellular communication process, recent evidence suggests that a critical inhibitory/excitatory Yin-Yang mechanism regulating the advent of puberty is epigenetic in ...

The initiation of mammalian puberty requires an increased pulsatile release of gonadotrophin hormone releasing hormone (GnRH) from the hypothalamus. This increase is brought about by changes in transsynaptic and glial–neuronal communication. Coordination of this regulatory neuronal–glial network likely requires the participation of a multiplicity of genes hierarchically arranged within discrete, but interactive, networks. The identity and structural features of at le...

Backgrounds and aims: The aims of the study were, on the one hand, to analize the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in a population of institutionalized older people and, on the other hand, to evaluate if the anthropometric parameters and the prevalence of malnutrition and sarcopenia were different in diabetic patients compared with the group of non-diabetics.Methods and material: A total of 312 institutionalized elderly people volunteers with a mea...

Although the effect of aging on adipose tissue metabolism have been thoroughly studied for years, changes in the antilipolytic action of insulin in visceral white adipose tissue from aged rats are still not completely understood. By fact, some contradictory data on the inhibition of isoproterenol-induced lipolysis by insulin with aging have been reported. As aging is a significant risk factor for increasing adiposity and the development of obesity, we hypothesized that the inh...

Background: Acromegaly is the consequence of excessive growth hormone (GH) secretion, usually produced by a pituitary adenoma. Transphenoidal surgery is the first-choice treatment; however, the development of new drug therapies in the last years, specially the somatostatin analogues (SSA), has open new and promising avenues for the treatment of pituitary tumors.Objective: To determine whether a detailed knowledge of the clinico-pathological and radiologi...

Endocrine-related cancers comprise a complex group of heterogeneous pathologies whose development and progression are profoundly conditioned by endocrine–metabolic deregulations. The well-known capacity of somatostatin (SST) to inhibit hormone secretion and cell proliferation in a wide variety of cell types, coupled to the ubiquitous expression of SST receptors (ssts) in normal and tumoral tissues, has led SST analogs (SSAs) to be extensively used in clinical practice for...

Non-thyroidal illness syndrome is the alteration in thyroid function tests (TFTs) that occurs in critically ill patients, including those using thyrotoxic medications. Therefore, it is a challenge to interpret thyroid function tests in a critically ill patient on amiodarone. Case of 66-year-old male with history of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, atrial fibrillation, and hypertension who presented to the emergency room due to progressive shortness of breath. Phys...

Background: High resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HRpQCT) can accurately determine three-dimensional in-vivo skeletal microstructure. However, HRpQCT is limited to the ultradistal radius and tibia (9 mm) imaging. MRI may be an alternative approach to cortical and trabecular bone analysis; to date there is limited information regarding the accurate quantification of trabecular bone.Method: Ninety-three 13–16 years-old ...