Endocrine Abstracts

A 54-year-old female presented with one week of weakness, fatigue, headache, worsening constipation, and general malaise. Background history included long-standing type 1 diabetes (glutamic acid decarboxylase positive), on continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion, proliferative diabetic retinopathy, end-stage diabetic nephropathy on haemodialysis and subclinical hypothyroidism. Tertiary hyperparathyroidism was diagnosed (adjusted calcium 2.82 mmol/l, phosphate 1.42 mmol/l, par...

Introduction: In addition to the medication prescribed by their doctors, patients may recourse to natural medicine and take herbal medications without thinking about their potential side effects and interactions with other drugs.Case Report: A 39-year-old female, with personal history of iron deficiency anemia, regular menses but long-standing dysmenorrhea and polymenorrhea and reactive anxiety-depressive disorder, complained of frequent intermenstrual s...

Introduction/Aim: New oral anticoagulant drugs such as the factor Xa inhibitor rivaroxaban are often preferred to the classic coumarins because they do not need frequent blood-test monitoring and have fever interactions with other drugs and foodstuffs. They are not, however, interaction free. Rivaroxaban is metabolized by oxidative degradation catalyzed by CYP3A4/5 and CYP2J2; it is also a substrate of the P-gp and ABCG2 efflux transporter proteins. CYP3A4 activity enhancers s...

The GIRFT (Getting It Right First Time) visits, about which we have consulted the membership of the Society for Endocrinology and had positive feedback from many members, have now started. We have done four pilots in Birmingham, Leicester, Oxford and York. The objectives are to try to introduce a quantitative approach to help demonstrate best practice. It will explore surgical outcome data and complication rates with regard to thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal, pituitary and neuro...

The cephalochordates (amphioxus) are the closest living invertebrate relatives of vertebrates, and have proved extremely useful for understanding the evolution of vertebrate genes and genomes. Molecular analysis in amphioxus has confirmed that vertebrates have a genome architecture that is fundamentally different from invertebrates. First, vertebrates have more genes than invertebrates. Second, vertebrates have many small multigene families (with 2 to 4 genes). Most of these a...

John Connell, MRC Blood Pressure Group, Glasgow, UK AbstractJohn Connell graduated in medicine from Glasgow in 1977. After initial training in endocrinology, he was appointed as a Clinical Scientist to the MRC Blood Pressure Unit, Western infirmary, Glasgow in 1983. He held an MRC Travelling Fellowship in the Howard Florey Institute for Experimental Physiology and Medicine from 1987, working with Professor John Coghlan...

Introduction: Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is one of the commonest endocrine disorders affecting women of reproductive age. We examined the specific tests that are done in primary care to lead to the diagnosis of PCOS, and to support the diagnosis once made.Methods: 1797 women were identified from a pooled GP practice database. The search included all patients defined with PCOS or related terms. Records included demographic infor...

Introduction: Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is one of the commonest endocrine disorders affecting women of reproductive age. We examined the specific tests that are done in primary care to lead to the diagnosis of PCOS, and to support the diagnosis once made.Methods: 1797 women were identified from a pooled GP practice database. The search included all patients defined with PCOS or related terms. Records included demographic infor...

Retinopathy is one of the more serious complications of type 1 diabetes. There is emerging knowledge re the development of retinopathy in childhod diabetes. We studied the clinical profiles of children with retinopathy in an industrial town in Northern England. The current clinic size is 160. 42 patients were identied from clinic records as having retinopathy. Formal screening is offered to all patients from age 12. The age range was 11–20 years; median age 16. 55% were f...

John S Bevan, Department of Endocrinology, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Foresterhill, Aberdeen AB25 2ZN, UK. AbstractJohn S Bevan is senior Consultant Endocrinologist at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Honorary Professor of Endocrinology at Aberdeen University. He qualified MB ChB, with Honours, from Edinburgh University in 1978 and his clinical training in Medicine & Endocrinology took place in Edinburgh, Oxford and Ca...