Endocrine Abstracts

Myotonic Dystrophy is an autosomal dominant multi-system disorder characterised by muscle weakness and myotonia, with associated cardiac, ophthalmic, gastrointestinal and endocrine abnormalitiesA 16-year-old boy was referred with a 2 months history of difficulty releasing his hand-grip and problems with swallowing. The clinical diagnosis of myotonic dystrophy 1 was confirmed with genetic testing with the detection of a DMPK expansion mutation. During inv...

By including the synthetic glucocorticoid (GC), dexamethasone, in the maternal drinking water on gestational days 16–19 (0.5 μg/ml) or days 1–7 after birth (1.0 μg/ml), we have recently demonstrated (McArthur et al. J. Neuroendocrinol. 17: 475) that perinatal exposure of rat pups to GCs increased dopaminergic (DA) cell numbers in the adult ventral tegmental area (VTA) at −5.1 to −5.4 mm relative to Bregma (level I). In order to investig...

Introduction: POEMS syndrome is a rare multisystemic disorder including polyneuropathy, organomegaly, endocrinopathy, monoclonal plasma-proliferative disorder and skin changes. We aim to describe the course of the endocrine disease in the context of this paraneoplastic syndrome.Methods: 69 patients with POEMS have been under the MDT care in our hospital. Data is currently available for 32 patients who attended the joint haematological/neurological/endocr...

Hyperthyroidism in the course of Graves’ disease leads to intensification of oxidative processes resulting in increased oxidative stress.Objectives: The effect of supplementation with vitamin E was monitored on the speed of attaining euthyroidism and on the oxidative stress parameters in patients with Graves’ disease, treated with thiamazole.Patients and methods: We examined 43 hyperthyroid patients and 12 euthyroid healt...

Cadherins are proteins important for regulation of cell to cell adhesion. It has been postulated that the loss of cadherins may be an essential step in progression of cancer cell dedifferation, leading to increased metastatic potential. In the present study, the immunoexpression of E-cadherin was examined in various types of thyroid neoplasms and compared with that expression in normal thyroid tissue. The histopathological slides from 138 thyroid carcinomas (90 papillary, 8 fo...

The pregnancy associated plasma proteins (PAPP) -A, -B, -C and -D were first isolated from pregnancy serum in 1974. Since, these proteins have been re-characterised; PAPP-B and PAPP-C are now known as pregnancy-specific beta-1 glycoproteins and PAPP-D as placental lactogen. PAPP-A was subsequently found to be a member of the metzincins family of metalloproteases. Recently we have identified a full-length cDNA encoding the preproprotein of pregnancy associated plasma protein-E ...

Aim: To assess whether E-cadherin expression levels in somatotropinomas were associated with the response to somatostatin analogues (SSAs) therapy in patients with acromegaly.Methods: In this retrospective study, 56 acromegaly patients that underwent transsphenoidal surgery were evaluated. All patients were treated preoperatively with SSAs (octreotide or lanreotide) for at least 6 months. Responsiveness to SSAs was evaluated by percent IGF-1 reduction af...

Purpose: Clinically Non-Functioning Pituitary Neuroendocrine Tumours (NF-PitNETs) present a varying degree of aggressiveness, and reliable prognostic markers are lacking. We aimed to characterize the distribution of E- and N-cadherin in corticotroph, PIT1 and null-cell NF-PitNETs, and link it to the clinical course of the tumours.Methods: We investigated the distribution of E- and N-cadherin by immunohistochemistry in a retrospective cohort of thirty tum...

Background: EuRRECa (eurreca.net) is a web-based project that supports professional networks such as European Reference Networks (ERNs) in capturing standardised clinical information. The project includes an e-reporting registry (e-REC), which can be used to perform regular surveillance of specific events. Since 2018, e-REC has been used by the ERN for rare endocrine conditions (Endo-ERN) to understand the number of new clinical encounters at centres within this network.<p...

Autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT) is characterised by infiltration of the thyroid by lymphocytes and other immune cells. Autoantibodies to thyroid-specific antigens: thyroglobulin (TG) and thyroperoxidase (TPO) are also produced. The penetration of inflammatory cells into target organ is regulated by cytokines and adhesion molecules expressed on thyroid endothelial cells. E-selectin is one of the selectin family, and is responsible for interaction between leukocytes and endothelium...