Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Sympathetic pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas (PPGLs) are rare neuroendocrine tumors associated with excess catecholamine production. Routine biochemical and imaging surveillance to monitor for recurrence and metastasis is recommended. However, there is limited data describing optimal surveillance approaches and post-operative biochemical thresholds for detecting recurrences or metastases. This study sought to correlate biochemical and imaging surveillance with ...

Introduction: Bile acid malabsorption (BAM) may be a contributing factor causing diarrhoea in patients with NETs, particularly among those who have undergone previous surgical resection of the terminal ileum and/or right colon or cholecystectomy (Naraev et al 2019). Aim(s): To identify the prevalence of bile acid malabsorption in neuroendocrine tumour patients (NET) at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB). Materi...

Background: In the UK, adults with growth hormone deficiency (GHD) are treated with recombinant Growth Hormone (GH) therapy according to NICE guidelines (TA64). Provided that patients show an initial improvement in their quality-of-life score, assessed using the Quality-of-Life Assessment of GHD in Adults (Qol-AGHDA) questionnaire, they can continue with their GH treatment long-term. However, in clinical practice, many patients are observed to discontinue GH r...

Adult growth hormone deficiency (AGHD) is a metabolic syndrome characterised by osteoporosis, increased visceral fat, adverse lipid profiles, decreased muscle mass and reduced energy levels. As such, it is associated with reduced quality of life (QoL) and increased mortality from cardiovascular disease. Synthetic growth hormone (GH) can be given to replace natural GH; however, treatment is costly at around £3350 per patient per year and could cause side effects including ...

Aim: To evaluate the effect of PPARG2 Pro12Ala, TNFα G(308)A and G(238)A, LIPC C(-514)T, ACE I/D, SLCO1B1 Val174Ala polymorphism on the response to statins therapy in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).Methods: We consecutively recruited patients with type 2 DM requiring lipid-lowering therapy according to current guidelines. Patients were started on either atorvastatin 10 or 20 mg. After 12 month of st...

Introduction: Recent data indicate that women affected by the polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are at a greater risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the association ethinylestradiol 30 μg–drospirenone 3 mg (DRP/EE30 μg) plus metformin and weight loss on surrogate markers of CVD in PCOS.Methods: Twenty-five young women with PCOS (mean age 22.76±0.83 years, body mass index (BMI...

In this study we employed a novel bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) biosensor to study the coupling specificity of somatostatin receptor 5 (SST5) and its naturally occurring mutant R240W in living cells. Our previous data demonstrated that SST5 carrying the R240W mutation as well as other mutations in the third intracellular loop maintained the ability to inhibit intracellular cAMP levels similarly to the wild-type but failed to mediate the inhibition of intrace...

In adipose tissue, glucocorticoids (GC) are known to regulate lipogenesis and lipolysis. Hexose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (H6PDH), a protein located in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) provides co-factor for the enzyme 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1), thus regulating the set point of its activity and allowing for tissue specific activation of GCs. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of lack of H6PDH on adipose tissue biology using the H6P...

The calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) is a G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) that maintains systemic calcium homeostasis by detecting alterations in extracellular calcium, which it transduces into signalling changes, mainly via the Gq/11 pathway, leading to a decrease in PTH secretion. The importance of CaSR is highlighted by studies of patients that harbour germline CaSR mutations, which lead to a gain of receptor function in autosomal dominant...

The calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) is a G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) that maintains systemic calcium homeostasis by detecting alterations in extracellular calcium, which it transduces into signalling changes, mainly via the Gq/11 pathway, leading to a decrease in PTH secretion. The importance of CaSR is highlighted by studies of patients that harbour germline CaSR mutations, which lead to a gain of receptor function in autosomal dominant...