Endocrine Abstracts

A 24-year-old Asian lady with no past medical history was admitted under the surgical team with right sided abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, postural dizziness and weight loss. She was give trimethoprim for a possible urinary tract infection along with paracetamol, tramadol and diclofenac. Blood tests on admission demonstrated normal renal, liver and thyroid function, a normal C-reactive protein and full blood count and a low sodium of 131 mmol/l. An abdominal ultrasound w...

A 72-year-old gentleman was diagnosed with primary hyperparathyroidism in 2005. He had 6 admissions in a year with hypercalcaemia refractory to treatment with conventional agents. On each admission he was treated with intravenous pamidronate and fluid resuscitation. This resulted in an average stay of 16 days and an average cost of £4800 per admission.A single parathyroid adenoma was diagnosed on sestambiscan. He was not considered fit for surgery d...

Background: Pleuro-pulmonary inflammatory fibrotic syndrome is a rare but recognised complication of dopamine agonist (DA) therapy in Parkinson’s disease. Here, we describe a case of asymptomatic pulmonary fibrosis, presumed secondary to DA therapy, in a patient treated with cabergoline for an invasive macroprolactinoma.Case report: A 47-year-old previously fit man was admitted as an emergency with a 3 days history of headache followed by collapse. ...

Purposes: To investigate effects of combination therapy with fenofibrate and α-lipoic acid (ALA) on atherogenic dyslipidemia, which determines the residual vascular risk and endothelial dysfunction, levels of proinflammatory mediators in patients with ischemic heart disease (IHD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).Methods: We examined 42 patients with IHD and T2DM (19 males, age 60.5±4.7 years). Baseline characteristics of patients included hi...

Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta)is present, predominantly in latent forms, in normal and malignant breast tissue. The mechanisms by which TGF-beta is activated physiologically remain largely an enigma. The aim of this study was to assess whether the proteases, cathepsin D and PSA could activate latent TGF-beta 1 and 2 in the MCF-7 hormone responsive and MDA-MB-231 hormone unresponsive human breast cancer cell lines. For the experiments, 1 x 106cells were s...

Variation in glucocorticoid (Gc) sensitivity underlies metabolic disease, and affects therapeutic response in inflammation. Using an in-vitro screening approach we identify two new mechanisms capable of regulating Gc sensitivity.The first involves interferon induced factor 16 (IFI16). IFI16 potentiated both transactivation, and Gc repression of NFκB. IFI16 did not affect glucocorticoid receptor (GR) expression, ligand dependent repression of GR expr...

Purposes: To investigate the effects of α-lipoic acid (ALA) on diabetic dyslipidemia, endothelial dysfunction, levels of adiponectin and proinflammatory mediators in combination therapy of patients with ischemic heart disease (IHD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).Methods: We examined 40 patients with IHD and T2DM (19 males, age 60.5±4.7 years). Baseline characteristics of patients included history of IHD (7.2±2.3 years), T2DM (4.7&#177...

Water intake in central diabetes insipidus (CDI) usually falls in range of 3–20 l a day. Intake of more than 20 l is regarded as physiologically unnecessarily even in the absence of antidiuretic hormone. We describe a family with 8 members suffering from autosomal recessive form of CDI due to mutation C105Y (codon numeration is given for preprovasopressin) in AVP gene. In all family members disease had presented in neonatal period or early childhood. It is remarkable that...

Background: Primary aldosteronism (PA) accounts for 5–10% of all patients with hypertension, and an even greater proportion of those with refractory hypertension. Accurate assessment of PA is important both for rationalisation of medical therapy and to identify those patients with unilateral disease who may benefit from surgery. Single timepoint testing may miss patients with intermittent (‘cyclical/periodic’) disease, a phenomenon seen in other endocrine hypers...

Background: Thyroid hormones (TH) are vital for fetal and placental development. TH transporters including monocarboxylate transporters 8 and 10 (MCT8, MCT10), organic anion transporters (OATP1A2, OATP4A1) and system-L amino acid transporters (LAT1, LAT2) are expressed in human placenta from 6 weeks of gestation. All of these TH transporters have been localized to the human syncytiotrophoblast layer of placental villi, which is in direct contact with maternal bl...