Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Carbimazole is a commonly used and effective treatment for hyperthyroidism. Although on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medicines, it comes with the potentially significant side effect of agranulocytosis. We set out a Quality Improvement Project to improve communication with patients to ensure their understanding through creating a patient information leaflet.Methods: 30 patients receiv...

Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) when used in the treatment of prostate carcinoma produces a severe state of hypogonadism. Several but not all epidemiological studies have reported that there is an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) including myocardial infarction, life threatening arrhythmias, diabetes and sudden cardiac death (1). Studies have also shown that ADT causes adverse effects many within three months on several key cardiovascular risk factors. Th...

Male hypogonadism can occur either due to disorders at the hypothalamic or pituitary levels or as a result of primary testicular failure. Conventionally, testosterone is replaced by depot intramuscular injections of testoterone esters or as implants producing non-physiological levels of serum testosterone. Human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) given twice-weekly s.c., stimulates endogenous testosterone secretion through its LH like action resulting in physiological serum testost...

VA Thornton-Jones, JAH Wass and HE Turner, OBJECTIVE: Despite a recommended injection frequency of 4 weekly(4w), prolonged duration of GH suppression has been observed in some patients following treatment with long-acting somatostatin analogues. The aim of our study was to perform a prospective systematic study to determine whether extending the interval between doses of Octreotide LAR (LAR) allows maintenance of 'safe' GH in selected patients with acromegaly.<p class="abs...

Testicular feminised (Tfm) mice bear an X-linked, single base pair deletion in the gene encoding the classical androgen receptor(1) consequently these animals express a truncated, non-functional form of the receptor protein. Affected animals (XTfmY) are rendered insensitive to actions mediated via this receptor. The Tfm mouse is therefore an excellent model for studying non-genomic testosterone signalling mechanisms. Unfortunately, Tfm mice are also deficient in the...

The in-hospital pharmacological management of patients with diabetes has recently been identified by the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit as a key safety issue. Over 30% of inpatient drug charts surveyed in the 2013 audit had at least 1 diabetes medication error in the preceding week. Patients with a diabetes medication error on their drug chart were also twice as likely to have one or more hypoglycaemic episodes during their hospital stay.A paper by Br...

Aims: Exertional hyperthermia stimulates the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis, increasing the availability of free cortisol in body fluids and opening a window onto physical stress for novel biosensing technologies. This study aimed to determine the impact of prolonged endurance exercise on relationships described for shorter activity bouts, by characterising interactions between salivary indices of glucocorticoid activity, serum total cortisol response and...

Pharmacokinetics and tolerability of a new a bioadhesive buccal testosterone tablet in testosterone deficient men.RJM Ross, A Jabbar, H Jones, B Roberts, K Dunkley, A Long, H Levine, DR CullenObjectives: A phase I single centre, open label study of the pharmacokinetics and tolerability of a buccal testosterone tablet (COL1621). Design: The study was approved by The South Sheffield Ethics Committee. Twelve testosterone deficient males were treated with the buccal tablet...

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors have previously been shown to inhibit DNA synthesis in human pituitary adenomas (Jones et al JCEM 1997; 82: 2143-7). ZD1839 ('Iressa'), a selective inhibitor of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase, is currently undergoing clinical trials in human cancers. We have investigated the effects of ZD1839 and EGF in the human pituitary cell line HP75 (derived by SV40 transfection of a human pituitary silent gonadotrophinoma) and in s...

The differential diagnosis of raised circulating thyroid hormones with normal TSH includes familial dysalbuminaemic hyperthyroxinaemia (FDH), a benign, inherited disorder caused by a variant albumin with increased affinity for thyroxine (T4) or triiodothyronine (T3). Three different albumin gene mutations, generating mutant proteins with increased affinity for either T4 (R218H,R218P) or T3 (L66P) have been commonly described. Typically, serum total T4 is raised and free T4 mea...