Endocrine Abstracts

Many studies have shown insulin resistance (IR) in majority of patients with adrenal incidentaloma. The euglycaemic hyperinsulinaemic glucose clamp technique is still considered as ‘golden standard’ for evaluation of insuline sensitivity. These methods are also complicated, labor-intensive procedure better for small research studies. Today, several surrogate indexes for insulin sensitivity were introduced such as: HOMA, QUIQI or G/IR. Some studies showed that QUIQI h...

Introduction: Assessment of adrenal insufficiency (AI) is done routinely through Synacthen test. However, the conventional high dose (250 μg) stimulation is supra-physiological, therefore 1 μg low dose test was developed.Aim: to investigate the utility of the Low-dose test vs the High-dose test, in patients with suspected central AI, in a tertiary centre of endocrinology, in the National Institute of Endocrinology, Bucharest, Romania.<p cla...

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a complex autoimmune disease. Several genetic loci have been implicated in the susceptibility to this illness. Evaluated was the role of the CTLA4 exon 1 A49G polymorphism and its role as a risk factor for T1D in our population. DNA from 120 patients with T1D and 96 control individuals were genotyped for CTLA4 exon 1 polymorphism by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification-restriction enzyme analysis and PCR amplification that used sequence-specif...

Together with Profs Lefkowitz and Kobilka, G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) have taken the stage in the 2012 Nobel award for Chemistry. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences states that ‘About half of all medications achieve their effect through G-protein-coupled receptors’. As shown in previous talks in this session, GPCRs are not acting individually; often they form homodimers and, more interestingly, they may occur as heterodimers. Heteromers open a completely ...

Background: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a chronic diabetic complication occurring in most diabetic patients after 20 years of disease. Progression of DR to its sight threatening stages is usually associated with worsening of underlying retinal vascular dysfunction and disease. The plasma kallikrein kinin system is activated during vascular injury, mediating important functions in inflammation, blood flow, and coagulation. Bradykinin B1 receptor (B1R) is expressed in human ret...

Dopamine receptor type 2 (DRD2) agonists (DA) are the first-choice treatment for prolactin (PRL)-secreting pituitary tumors, but poorly effective in non-functioning (NF)-PitNETs. Along with G protein-dependent signaling, DRD2 also mediates non-canonical beta-arrestin-dependent pathways, where reduction of AKT phosphorylation plays a leading role for the antiproliferative effect of DRD2 in pituitary tumors. Through UNC9994 and MLS1547, a beta-arrestin 2-biased and a G protein-b...

Introduction: Hypertriglyceridemia (HTG) is a rare but well-known cause of acute pancreatitis, which can be fatal with an overall mortality rate of 36-50% in the most severe forms.Case presentation: A 29-year-old patient was admitted to the emergency department with abdominal pain, bilious vomiting and alteration of general condition. Physical examination showed hemodynamic shock with diffuse abdominal tenderness. The Laboratory results showed a serum li...

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) constitute the major family of cell surface receptors. They comprise receptors for light, taste and smell as well as ions, small transmitters, peptides and large protein hormones. Given their involvement in fundamental biological processes and their accessibility, GPCRs serve as targets for many classes of drugs, including beta-blockers, antihistamines and opiates.Whereas many biochemical steps involved in GPCR signali...

The G protein subunit α-gustducin is generally accepted as a marker for chemosensitive cells. Since chemosensation is especially important for the navigation of sperm towards the egg, attempts were made to explore whether α-gustducin might also be expressed in spermatozoa. RT-PCR experiments revealed that a gustducin PCR specific RNA fragment with the predicted size could be amplified from total mouse and rat testis. To identify the testicular cell type in which &#94...

Background and aims: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is an important chronic complication of diabetes mellitus (DM), and is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in adults. Although several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been associated with DR, more information is needed to unravel the genetics of this complex disease. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small noncoding RNAs that regulate expression of at least 60% of all protein-coding genes. A number of miRNAs ha...