Endocrine Abstracts

Endocr Relat Cancer August 1, 2015 22 481–504. DOI: 10.1530/ERC-14-0546...

Objective: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) and primary thyroid lymphoma (PTL) are two highly aggressive malignancies of the thyroid, both leading to a rapidly enlarging neck mass. Fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is generally performed as the primary examination for diagnosis in thyroid pathology but shows low sensitivity in diagnosing ATC or PTL. Non-diagnostic FNACs are usually followed by core-needle biopsy (CNB) or diagnostic surgery. As sensitivities of up to 100...

Background: The prevalence of childhood vitamin D deficient rickets in the UK is rising due to lack of sun exposure. The Department of Health, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have devised guidelines on vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy, breastfeeding and childhood. A recent Government initiative, Healthy Start vitamins allow access to free vitamin D for women and children from low-i...

Prostate stem cells have been proposed to participate in prostate cancer initiation. Furthermore, based on their androgen-independence, they are suspected to trigger prostate cancer recurrence when the tumor is no longer responsive to anti-androgens. Therefore better understanding the regulation of this particular cell pool may have important therapeutic relevance. In the human prostate, expression of prolactin (PRL) and activation of its major downstream signaling effector St...

The survival of an organism relies on its ability to promptly, effectively and reproducibly communicate with brain networks that control food intake and energy homeostasis. To achieve this, circulating factors of hunger and satiety reflecting nutrient availability must cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to reach effectors neurons. A defect in this process invariably leads to uncontrolled body weight. Here we will discuss the key role played in this process by a peculiar type ...

Hypoglycaemia – especially in elderly hospital in-patients – is far less uncommon in non-diabetic patients than was previously thought but is only very rarely due to accidental or malicious ‘insulin’ (including insulin analogues and sulphonylurea) administration. The question of when to suspect that this might be the case and how to confirm or refute it is one that crops up from time to time in every community. Sometimes it is relatively simple and easy to ...

A defining trait of modern civilization is easy access to food combined with minimum energy expenditure. This unbalance is responsible for the emergence of considerable wide-spread obesity and its harrowing cortege of life-threatening complications such as type-2 diabetes. Rare genetic disorders that manifest with obesity are of great value in discovering new pieces of the jigsaw on the origins of obesity as they allow us to link a phenotype with a specific protein or group of...

Androgen-independent recurrence is the major limit of androgen ablation therapy for prostate cancer. Identification of alternative pathways promoting prostate tumor growth is thus needed. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (Stat5) has been recently shown to promote human prostate cancer cell survival/proliferation and to be associated with early prostate cancer recurrence. Stat5 is the main signaling pathway triggered by prolactin (PRL), a polypeptide hormone m...

Long considered as a vestige of evolution, the primary cilium has recently emerged as a crucial orgnalle in the regulation of cell function. Ciliated cells are ubiquitously present in the organism and until recently only two cellular types were considered as unciliated cells, namely the adipocyte and the hepatocyte. An in vitro approach evidenced that the preadipocyte was transiently ciliated during its terminal differentiation phase and that the primary cilium was acti...

The neuroendocrine fraction of GnRH neurons sends axon to the median eminence of the hypothalamus where they release their neurohormone into the pituitary portal vasculature to regulate the reproductive axis. Specialized unciliated ependymal cells named tanycytes, which line the floor of the third ventricle, confer to the median eminence its peculiar cytoarchitecture. Tanycyte cell bodies are located in the ventral border of the third ventricle but they also send processes to ...