Endocrine Abstracts

Concern exists in the literature that the long-term use of ergot-derived dopamine agonists (DAs) may be associated with the development of clinically-significant cardiac valvulopathy. This has arisen largely by extrapolation from experience with high doses of these drugs given to patients with degenerative neurological conditions and it has led to regulatory authority recommendations to arrange regular screening echocardiograms for patients receiving much lower doses of these ...

Epidemiological studies have demonstrated an association between low birth weight and an increased prevalence of cardio-metabolic disorders in later life. Both human and animal studies suggest that this phenomenon of ‘early life programming’ is not limited to the first generation offspring. Epidemiological studies in humans have shown intergenerational effects on birth weight, cardiovascular risk factors and type 2 diabetes. Transgenerational effects on birth weight,...

Selective Parathyroid Venous Sampling in Patients with Complicated Primary HyperparathyroidismCM Ogilvie, PL Brown, M Matson, R Carpenter, WM Drake, PJ Jenkins, SL Chew, JP MonsonCentre for Endocrinology and Departments of Surgery and Radiology, St Bartholomew's Hospital, QMUL, London EC1A 7BEThe role of pre-operative localisation of abnormal parathyroid glands remains controversial but is particularly releva...

THE SENSITIVITY OF 123I-MIBG IN THE DETECTION OF HISTOLOGICALLY CONFIRMED CATECHOLAMINE-PRODUCING TUMOURS.M Ismail, R Foley, WM Drake, AB Grossman, PJ Jenkins, SL Chew, GMBesser, R Reznek, K Britton, JP MonsonDepartments of Endocrinology, Nuclear Medicine and Radiology, StBartholomew's Hospital (QMUL), London EC1A 7BERadionuclide imaging is widely used for the loc...

Lactotroph pituitary adenomas (prolactinomas, PRLomas) are the most common form of functioning pituitary tumour. The vast majority can be managed successfully by means of medical (dopamine agonist) therapy; only a small minority require second-line therapy of surgical resection with or without adjunctive radiation. PRLomas occur in adolescent patients, but are unusual. Using a combination of illustrative case presentations and selective reference to informative publications, t...

Lactotroph pituitary adenomas (prolactinomas, PRLomas) are the most common form of functioning pituitary tumour. The vast majority can be managed successfully by means of medical (dopamine agonist) therapy; only a small minority require second-line therapy of surgical resection with or without adjunctive radiation. PRLomas occur in adolescent patients, but are unusual. Using a combination of illustrative case presentations and selective reference to informative publications, t...

What does a clinical endocrinologist actually do? There are no angiogram, pacemaker, bronchoscopy, ERCP, kidney biopsy or joint injection lists to be done. Our only practical procedure is venepuncture, albeit multiple times and occasionally at odd times of day. Within a single clinic an endocrine physician will have to ‘key in’ very quickly to a variety of symptomatic issues that often go to the core of human identity. There may be two successive patients with second...

Although development is a highly organised and tightly regulated process, the developing embryo is sensitive to environmental influences, resulting in pathophysiological changes which may increase the risk of later cardio-metabolic, neurobehavioural and reproductive disorders. We have shown that prenatal overexposure to the synthetic glucocorticoid dexamethasone (Dex) in rats reduces birthweight in the first generation (F1) and leads to hypertension and insulin resistance in t...

Several reports indicate that hypopituitarism is associated with decreased life expectancy compared to age-matched healthy controls and that this mortality penalty exists despite ‘adequate’ or ‘satisfactory’ replacement with glucocorticoids, thyroid hormone and sex steroids. Almost coincident with these studies came a series of randomised, placebo-controlled trials, in which it was convincingly demonstrated that treatment of growth hormone deficient (GHD) a...

An 18 year old gentleman was first reviewed in our endocrine adolescent transition clinic. He had been under the care of the paediatricians since birth, where he initially presented with developmental delay. This triggered investigations which led to the diagnosis of septo-optic dysplasia. At aged 12 he developed cranial diabetes insipidus (DI) and secondary hypothyroidism. This was managed with intranasal DDAVP (20 ug BD) and thyroxine 125 μg. Due to an abnormal thirst t...