Endocrine Abstracts

IntroductionPituitary macroadenoma requires extensive endocrine investigations to diagnose any evidence of hormone excess or deficiency. As a part of routine investigation, IGF-1 is frequently used to exclude growth hormone excess. Here we report 3 cases of pituitary macroadenoma, who had a normal pre-operative IGF-1 but post-operatively developed biochemical evidence of growth hormone excess.CasesWe report 3...

A 38 year old lady presented at 30 weeks gestation with a 3 week history of headaches and 5 day history of blurring of vision, worse in the left eye. Visual field testing revealed a bitemporal hemianopia. MRI scan of the pituitary showed appearances typical of a macroadenoma which was lobulated in appearance with suprasellar extension (max height 13mm) and compression of the optic chiasm. Endocrine tests indicated that thyroxine was low for the 3rd trimester (79nmol/l), with f...

IntroductionIsolated TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) deficiency has been reported in the literature as a rare condition. Only 60 cases have been reported so far since 1960. It has been defined as central hypothyroidism without evidence of any other pituitary hormonal deficiencies or evidence of any structural pituitary abnormality. We report 3 cases of suspected isolated TSH deficiency, 2 of which presented in a year to one endocrine centre.<p clas...

Adults with brain tumours experience changes in multiple aspects of quality of life and this is associated with their medical condition and its treatment. There is some evidence to suggest that the mode of treatment is also a significant factor in the development of affective symptomatology. The primary aim is to explore within our cohort of patients treated for pituitary tumours, whether there are significant differences in multiple domains of quality of life and the severity...

OBJECTIVE Recent studies have shown the benefits of insulin sensitising agents such as Metformin in the treatment of infertility and hirsuitism in PCOS. However not all women with PCOS are insulin resistant. Within a clinic population of women referred for treatment of hirsuitism, we examined the utility of fasting insulin/glucose measurement in identifying which women were insulin resistant.DESIGN We evaluated an outpatient clinic group of 25 PCOS pati...

Clinic based studies have shown that patients with Addison's disease have relatively high rates of depression and anxiety symptoms compared with population-based reference samples. Addison's disease results in deficiency of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and DHEA-sulphate in addition to glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids. DHEA is thought to have beneficial effects on energy level and mood, independent of circulating testosterone levels. Thus there may be a direct link betwe...

IntroductionWe have previously shown that patients with pituitary Cushing's have impaired quality of life vs. other pituitary tumour groups. Whether this is related to direct neural effects of excess ACTH or cortisol is uncertain. In order to address this, we compared patients who had undergone definitive treatment for pituitary vs adrenal Cushings.DesignWe assessed 14 patients with biochemically cured pituit...