Endocrine Abstracts

GH is an important regulator of longitudinal growth in children and metabolism in adults. GH is used for treatment deficiency disorders in both children and adults. GH treatment is safe and well tolerated. However, its clinical use is limited to daily s.c. injections which poses a challenge for both the patients and the physicians and has prompted research into alternative approaches to GH treatment.NNC0195-0092 is a hGH derivative conjugated with an alb...

The identification of genomic determinants responsible for common multifactorial diseases like type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is facilitated in large families from relatively genetically-isolated populations and can extend results from GWS based on a case–control cohort to detect rare alleles with strong effects. In order to search for sequence variants conferring risk of T2DM we previously conducted a genome-wide linkage study in 108 French–Canadian families from t...

Thyroid hormones (TH) regulate (brain) development, growth, body temperature, most pathways involved in energy and structural metabolism as well as anabolic and catabolic reactions. Inadequate availability of essential trace elements (iodine, selenium, iron, zinc) limits TH biosynthesis, metabolism and action. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDC), i.e., exogenous chemicals or their mixtures, can interfere with any aspect of TH synthesis, distribution, transport, metabolism, an...

Thyroid hormone (TH) biosynthesis, storage and secretion is organized in a complex series of biochemical reactions round an evolutionary conserved functional unit, the thyroid follicle, a highly vascularised epithelial structure enclosing the colloidal lumen mainly composed of thyroglobulin (Tg). The luminal apical surface of this tight epithelial monolayer is the site of H2O2 dependent TH biosynthesis and is involved in mobilization of Tg, the colloidal ...

Appropriate treatment of acromegaly results in biochemical control or cure and reduces signs and symptoms, morbidity and excess mortality. Nonetheless, many of these patients still have considerable decreases in quality of life parameters and suffer from increased morbidity due to combinations of factors, including pituitary insufficiency despite optimal endocrine substitution, irreversible effects of previous GH/IGF-1 excess with complex multisystem morbidity, and the effects...

A statement attributed to Aristotle is: ‘You can easily avoid criticism by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.’ If you want to do research, apply for competitive grants and publish relevant scientific papers in competitive journals, criticism is a fact of life. There is also a positive twist to criticism: it is a major driving force to advance knowledge in science.Frequently, the first reaction of authors to critical comments of r...

Although the role of radioiodine (RaI) in recurrent or metastatic thyroid cancer is beyond dispute, the efficacy of this therapy is hampered by the decreased expression of the sodium iodide symporter (NIS) in DTC during the process of dedifferentiation. At present, there are no effective therapies available for RaI non-avid DTC. Conventional chemotherapy is hardly effective in DTC, and no longer recommended in international guidelines. In DTC, many genetic alterations have bee...

Active resolution of inflammation is a previously unrecognized process essential for tissue homeostasis. Monocytes and macrophages may either promote or down-regulate inflammatory reactions depending on their state of activation. The effects of glucocorticoids (GCs), the most widely used immunosuppressive drugs, on monocytes are currently not well defined. By analyzing the GC-induced expression pattern in human monocytes by microarray technology and functional clustering we de...

Adipose tissue is central to the control of energy and glucose homeostasis. Modulation of corticosteroid action in adipose tissue represents a potent mechanism to alter this homeostasis. Corticosteroid hormone action in adipocytes has long been considered to be mediated by glucocorticoid receptors (GR). We and others have recently identified the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) as a new target to modulate adipocyte function. The generation of homo- and heterodimers of the GR an...

Introduction: Fibrous dysplasia (FD) is a rare mosaic disorder originating from the activating mutation in the gene encoding the alpha subunit of the Gs stimulatory protein (GNAS) in multipotent skeletal stem cells that cannot differentiate into bone-forming osteoblasts. FD is thought to be a self-limited disease with a peak of activity in childhood and a waning of activity in adulthood.Case presentation: We report a 39-year-old woman with mild ...