Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Hypopituitary patients receiving conventional hormone substitution, but without GH replacement, have an increased mortality from cardiovascular diseases. Inadequate hormone replacement is a possible cause of this increased mortality. GH deficiency in adult patients has been associated with several cardiovascular risk factors, including hyperlipidemia, increased abdominal adiposity, and impaired insulin sensitivity.Aim of the study: The aim ...

In terms of mechanism by which thyroid diseases lead the endothelial dysfunction, several aspects have been taking into consideration. One potential factor may be variation in plasma asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) levels. ADMA, which is derived from the catabolism of proteins containing methylated arginine residues, competitively inhibits NOS. The relationship between thyroid disease and variation in plasma ADMA levels is still a potential research area. The aim of this st...

In euthyroid women normal pregnancy is associated with a rise in free thyroxine and fall in TSH levels attributable to high levels of hCG in the first trimester. In hypothyroid women free thyroxine tends to fall and TSH rises if the dose of thyroxine is not raised, due to further pregnancy - associated changes including a rapid rise in thyroxine-binding globulin and increased renal clearance and placental metabolism of thyroid hormone. Fetal thyroid development occurs by 12 we...

By including the synthetic glucocorticoid (GC), dexamethasone, in the maternal drinking water on gestational days 16–19 (0.5 μg/ml) or days 1–7 after birth (1.0 μg/ml), we have recently demonstrated (McArthur et al. J. Neuroendocrinol. 17: 475) that perinatal exposure of rat pups to GCs increased dopaminergic (DA) cell numbers in the adult ventral tegmental area (VTA) at −5.1 to −5.4 mm relative to Bregma (level I). In order to investig...

Recent studies report that nandrolone, a widely used anabolic steroid by athletes to enhance their performance, is produced endogenously in the humans. However, the detection of nandrolone has mainly been indicated by the measurement of its urinary metabolites (19-norandrosterone and 19-noretiocholanone). The aim of this study was to develop a sensitive and specific ELISA for nandrolone to investigate whether the parent steroid can be detected in the urine of healthy volunteer...

Aim of the study: to analyze surgical outcome in patients who underwent unilateral or bilateral adrenalectomy for hypercortisolism.Methods: retrospective study including patients operated on between January 1994 and June 2005.Results: adrenalectomies for hypercortisolism were performed in 18 patients (5 males, 13 females, mean age 43.6±16.1 years). Indications were cortisol producing adenoma (n=10), adrenocortical carcinoma (n...

Clinical case: A 37 year-old Caucasian man was admitted with sudden onset lower limb weakness following a carbohydrate-heavy meal the night before. Pulse was 110/min, sinus rhythm, BP 167/92 mmHg. There was generalised muscle weakness, particularly in his legs, with hyporeflexia and hypotonia. There was no sensory deficit and plantar responses were downgoing. Serum K+ was 2.4 mmol/L, associated with typical ECG anomalies, and was corrected with 40 mmol intravenous KCl followed...

In previous work we demonstrated that various adipokines, including leptin and resistin, were expressed in the hypothalamus and anterior pituitary gland. We hypothesized that a practical approach to investigate the putative central role of such factors would be to selectively silence gene expression by RNA interference (RNAi). We tested this hypothesis using model in vitro systems : C6 glioblastoma cells , which we reported express leptin, and 3T3-L1 adipocytes which are known...

Objective: Because the altered expression of superoxide dismutases, CuZn (SOD1) and Mn (SOD2) have been shown to constitute the basis of either resistance or susceptibility to the cytotoxic effect of various cytostatics and nucleoside drugs, we tested whether in human uterin cervix carcinoma cells (HeLaS3) the cytotoxic effect of cytostatics adriamycin (Adr), and cis-platinum (CP) or nucleoside drug, tiazofurin (TF) were involved in the activity of SOD1 and SOD2. Methods: Cyto...

In breast cancer associations between p160 co-activator proteins and the development of resistance to endocrine treatment have been shown. We hypothesized that nuclear co-regulatory proteins may interact with non-steroid receptors. We investigated the effect of silencing the co-activator, SRC-1, on tumour cell growth in vitro. We also examined the MAPK activated transcription factors, Ets, as possible interaction proteins of the co-activator SRC-1 in human breast cancer. The e...