Endocrine Abstracts

Sixty patients with traumatic brain injury are newly diagnosed every year in our island, particularly in patients with addictive behaviours. In France, it is the 4th rank of health expenses, as a major issue of public health care. In order to perform a first endocrine assessment, we performed a pilot study to diagnose traumatic brain injury induced hypopituitarism, assessed at least 6 months after injury, in moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries patients, hospitalized in...

The pituitary derives from an invagination of the oral ectoderm, Rathke’s pouch, where pituitary progenitors are specified during early development. These progenitors are marked by expression of Sox2 and their entry into differentiation involves a switch from Sox2 to expression of other transcription factors implementing each of the lineage-specific differentiation programs. This switch is also accompanied by a switch in cell cycle control mechanisms that may be disrupted...

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Kallmann syndrome (KS) is a genetic disorder associating pubertal failure with congenital absent or impaired sense of smell. KS is related to defective neuronal development affecting both the migration of olfactory nerve endings and GnRH neurons. The discovery of several genetic mutations responsible for KS led to the identification of signaling pathways involved in these processes, but the mutations so far identified account for only 30–40% of cases of KS. We attempted t...

Persistence of elevated TSH levels despite large doses of L-thyroxin is not uncommon, although thyroxin substitution is usually easy and convenient. The first cause to be considered is thyroxin malabsorption, whether organic, due to concomitant gastric or intestinal disease, or bariatric surgery, or, more frequently, related to dietary or drug interference. Proton-pump inhibitors, antacids and a long list of drugs may decrease thyroxin absorption. Drugs and thyr...

Introduction: Achieving an HbA1c of less than 48 mmol/mol minimises the risk of complications in children and young people with type one diabetes. Elective admissions to hospital are one option employed to improve glycaemic control in patients with an HbA1c above target. There is however limited evidence to support such admissions. We aimed to retrospectively compare glycaemic control between patients electively admitted to hospital to stabilise their dia...

Tpit is a pituitary-specific transcription factor that is important for corticotroph terminal differentiation. In TPit null mice corticotroph cells do not differentiate and cells immunopositive for SF1, LH and FSH are observed in the intermediate lobe (Pulichino et al. 2003 Genes Dev). As the anterior lobe in TPit null mice showed a 50% decrease in cell number compared to wild-type (WT), and corticotrophs comprise only 5–7% of anterior lobe cells, we investigated c...

Hypocalcemia is a classic complication after total thyroidectomy, mostly due to post-operative hypoparathyroidism. However others factors, like vitamin D deficiency, may contribute to this hypocalcemia.Objective: To determine if vitamin D preoperative status influence early postoperative serum calcium levels after total thyroidectomy.Patients and methods: Seventy-nine patients (65 women/14 men), mean age 52.8 (±12.7), were inc...

Background and aims: Patients with AVPR2 gene mutations present nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (NDI) resulting to a severe deficit in urine concentration despite high levels of circulating Antidiuretic Hormone (ADH). The mutation in codon 106 of the AVPR2 gene leading to the substitution of arginine by cysteine (R106C) is known to produce a mild disease while in vitro characterization revealed a complete loss of function. We report the case of a 24-year-old male member ...

The classic view of sexual differentiation in mammalian species holds that sex differences in the brain and behavior develop under the influence of estrogens derived from the neural aromatization of testosterone: the brain develops as male in the presence of estrogens and as female in their absence. In agreement with this view, it has been proposed that the female brain needs to be protected from estrogens produced by the placenta and that alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) - a major fet...