Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Offspring of mothers with diabetes have greater risk of adverse metabolic outcome in later life. Increased adiposity is a plausible mediator. We performed a meta-analysis of studies examining adiposity in infants and children in relation to maternal diabetes.Methods: Citations were identified in PubMed and authors contacted for additional data. Fat free mass, fat mass, body fat %, and skinfold thickness were compared in offspring of mothers...

One of the corner stones of nutritional advice children and young people with diabetes is an awareness of how the food they choose can affect their blood glucose. Knowing; which foods contain carbohydrate, how to find this information out, how to estimate the amount of carbs and why not all carbs are the same, can help those living with diabetes, their families and careers make informed choices. Chris Cheyette is senior diabetes specialist dietitian at Kings College Hospital. ...

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The ability of thyroid cells to specifically uptake radioiodine is frequently compromised in the neoplastic setting, particularly in older patients with poorly differentiated thyroid cancer and larger metastases, resulting in a 10-year survival rate of less than 10%. The mechanisms which govern cellular iodide uptake via the sodium iodide symporter (NIS) have been elucidated with increasing molecular clarity over the past 35 years. NIS is regulated in a tissue-specific manner,...

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane-bound vesicles which are release by most, if not all, cell types into the extracellular space. They may be divided into two types: microvesicles which are shed directly from the plasma membrane; and exosomes which are released via multivesicular bodies. Although initially thought to be cellular junk, EVs represent an important mode of intercellular communication and are highly conserved across species. This is achieved through the tran...

SIADH is the commonest cause of hyponatraemia in hospital practice SIADH must be distinguished from hypovolaemic and hypervolaemic hyponatraemia, and a diagnosis of euvolaemic hyponatraemia is established, the main differential is between SIADH and glucocorticoid deficiency.Not all cases of SIADH require active management. Drug induced SIADH usually responds to drug withdrawal, though active management may speed up return to eunatraemia if the drug has a...

The initial report of the syndrome of Inappropriate Antidiuresis (SIAD) was published as recently as 1960 in the American Journal of Medicine. Schwartz and colleagues described an elegant series of physiological studies, in which two patients with hyponatraemia and lung carcinoma were shown to have an inability to excrete a water load, and who responded to water restriction with a rise in plasma sodium concentration. They termed this syndrome SIADH; in the 60 years since then,...

Hyponatraemia is the commonest electrolyte abnormality in hospitalised patients and every published series has demonstrated that hyponatraemia is associated with increased mortality and substantial morbidity, including longer duration of hospital stay. The debate between the contribution between hyponatraemia and the causative condition to the increased mortality remains to be resolved, but increasing evidence points to an independent association with hyponatraemia. It is not ...

Scientific misconduct is not a question of all or none but presents itself in many shades of grey. It is essential to understand how fabrication, falsification and plagiarism are defined and to be educated where misconduct starts, to what extent it finds its way into today’s science, and what publishers and editors currently do to prevent it....

Traumatic brain injury is well recognised to cause pituitary dysfunction. Although data suggests that this is uncommon after mild head injury (GCS 14–15), the consensus from a large number of papers, using different assays and methods of testing, is that 15–30% of long term survivors of TBI have pituitary dysfunction. This offers the option of medical therapy after TBI, to improve quality of life and, potentially, improve rehabilitation.In the ...