Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Maternal distress, including poorer life satisfaction, increased anxiety and depression (A&D) symptoms, are worse in Severely Obese (SO) than lean pregnancy and may alter placental genes regulating foetal glucocorticoid exposure and placental growth. We hypothesised that the associations between increased maternal distress with changes in placental mRNA levels leading to a reduced placental barrier to maternal glucocorticoids, and altered placental IGF2, are ...

Introduction: Childhood adrenocortical tumours (ACT) are extremely rare (world wide incidence: 0.3/million per year). Most affected are young girls – female:male 2:1, peak age at diagnosis – 3.5 years.Case report: A 2.5-year-old girl presented with a 4-month history of greasy hair, acne, and weight gain especially around face and upper shoulders. She had irritability, daytime lethargy, and night-time sleep disturbance. She later developed pubic...

Introduction: Childhood adrenocortical tumours (ACT) are extremely rare (worldwide incidence: 0.3/million per year). Most affected are young girls – female:male 2:1, peak age at diagnosis −3.5 years.Case report: A 2.5-year-old-girl presented with a 4-month history of greasy hair, acne, weight gain, especially around face and upper shoulders. She had irritability, daytime lethargy and night-time sleep disturbance. She later developed pubic hair...

Hypothyroidism presents diagnostic challenges when occurring in an extremely unwell infant with hepatoblastoma. This case indicates a possible link between Beckwith–Wiedemann syndrome (BWS) and severe hypothyroidism.Antenatally, the baby had polyhydramnios and an abdominal mass. After normal vaginal delivery at 38+4 weeks, examination showed macrosomia (4007 g) small nose, low set ears and inverted V-shaped mouth. Transient hypoglycaemia on day 1 re...

AbstractBackground: β-cell apoptosis is a cardinal feature of type 1 diabetes. A20 is an important negative regulator of inflammation and apoptosis and protects against β-cell death in response to inflammatory cytokines, and β-cell rejection following islet transplantation1. Preliminary experiments showed rapid induction of A20 (15–60 min) in β-cells in response to treatment with TNFα. Experimenta...

Background: Cystic fibrosis is an autosomal recessive disease characterised by mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene. The mutations alter fluid secretion in the lungs and digestive systems and the vast majority of patients die from pulmonary disease. CF-related diabetes (CFRD) is the most significant co-morbidity for patients with CF and accelerates lung decline. Recent evidence from animal and cell models has implicated a role for CF...

Background: One in five women is obese at antenatal booking. Maternal obesity increases risk of offspring complications including higher birthweight. We hypothesised that this is mediated by altered action of maternal glucocorticoids, key regulators of fetal growth and development. We compared cortisol levels during pregnancy and placental glucocorticoid sensitivity in obese and lean women.Methods: With ethical approval serum cortisol levels were measure...

GnRH is secreted in pulses and its effects on pituitary gonadotropes depend on pulse frequency. This is crucial for physiological control and therapeutic manipulation of the system (in IVF and treatment of hormone-dependent cancers) but GnRH pulse frequency decoding mechanisms are unknown. The simplest form of frequency dependence is a linear relationship between integrated inputs and outputs but such ‘integrative tracking’ cannot explain the bell-shaped frequency-re...

Epidemiological evidence suggests that timing of eating and nutrient composition of meals can predict obesity development. However, few studies have examined the association between nutrient composition of eating occasions and prevalence of metabolic syndrome. We examined the association between time-of-day and nutrient composition of eating occasions and long-term development of metabolic syndrome in the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (1946 British birth cohort...

GnRH acts via G-protein coupled receptors to stimulate phospholipase C. This activates protein kinases C, driving the activation of extracellular signal regulated kinases (ERKs) that mediates transcriptional effects of GnRH. GnRH is secreted in pulses that cause rapid, transient and reproducible ERK activation (1). ERK response kinetics dictate biological consequences in many systems and, although GnRH-mediated ERK activation has been thoroughly explored, little is known about...