Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Premature infants are at risk of delayed screening for congenital hypothyroidism (CH), which may markedly affect initial treatment time and neurodevelopmental outcome. Rescreening preterm infants at four weeks (30 days) of life has been recommended to detect cases with delayed TSH elevation.Aim: To examine the performance of the CH screening programme in preterm infants aged ≤32 weeks in terms of timing of the initial Guthrie tests, and...

Introduction: The prevalence of congenital malformations (CM) in congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is higher than expected, particularly for cardiac malformations, but the published data vary considerably – from 2.4% to 24% – in different series.Methods: Using existing databases for CH and Scottish population statistics, we have retrospectively determined the prevalence of cardiac, non–cardiac and syndromic disorders in Scotland since the int...

A 24-year-old Pakistani woman presented one day after returning from a 6-week holiday in Pakistan with a 3-day history of generalised weakness, difficulty in walking and left flank pain. She was known to have mixed connective tissue disease (MCTD). Clinically she was pyrexial and had generalised muscular weakness (power 3/5), and hypotonia. Biochemically, she was found to have hypokalaemia (1.8 mmol/l), raised serum urea (8.1 mmol/l), and creatinine (160 μmol/l), high ESR...

Hypogonadism is more prevalent in populations with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and/or cardiovascular disease (CVD) and is associated with increase in all-cause and CVD mortality. Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) improves visceral adiposity, insulin resistance, glycemia, lipids inflammatory cytokines and cardiac ischaemia. The long-term safety of TRT in men with CVD and/or T2D is not known and the British National formulary advises use with caution these groups.<p class="ab...

Introduction: The concept of life-long medical therapy for acromegaly has recently been challenged. Hormonal remission for up to 48 months after stopping somatostatin analogues in acromegalic patients has recently been reported. Herein, we present a further case showing the longest remission yet in growth hormone levels after somatostatin analogue treatment.Case: In 1987, a 43 year old man was diagnosed with acromegaly [nadir GH on oral glucose tolerance...

Differentiated thyroid cancers function less well than normal thyroid tissue but continue to secrete thyroglobulin (Tg) which can be iodinated to form thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyroxine (T3). Functioning metastases causing thyrotoxicosis are rare. The majority of reported cases have large volume, metastatic follicular tumours. A significant proportion develop T3 toxicosis with normal T4 levels. T3 toxicosis is often mild....

We present a rare case of hypercalcaemia caused by a parathyroid carcinoma.An asymptomatic 74 year old gentleman was referred with slightly raised alkaline phosphatase and corrected serum calcium the results of which are shown below:Serum Calcium 3.02 mmol/l, Albumin 41 g/l, PTH 18.7 pmol/l, Urine Calcium 10.6 mmol/24 h, TSH 6.3 Mu/l, FT4 12.3 pmol/l, FT3 5.1 pmol/l, TPO antibody >5000 IU/ml, ALP 142 iu/l.<p class="abstext"...

Background: Low testosterone levels are a common finding in men with type 2 diabetes and are also associated with low HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) levels which are an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The androgen receptor CAG repeat polymorphism (AR CAG) and GGN repeat polymorphism (AR GGN) affect receptor function such that shorter AR CAG and AR GGN=23 are associated with greater transcriptional activity in vitro.Methods and results...

A 37-year-old Asian lady was diagnosed with T3 N1b Papillary carcinoma of the thyroid and operated in 1999. Post operatively she developed hypoparathyroidism and has been on regular calcium and thyroid hormone replacement.She was on her 5th pregnancy this year. She had 2 previous Caesarian sections and 1 normal vaginal delivery. She was referred to Good Hope Hospital for obstetric care & local tertiary centre for investigation of hypocalcaemia having...

Background: Studies of memory function in patients treated for pituitary adenoma demonstrate deficits in immediate memory (IM) regardless of whether surgery or radiotherapy was received. We have previously shown variability in IM between patients who received the same treatment. The present study was designed to identify changes in the neurological pathways associated with memory function in patients treated for non-functioning pituitary adenoma (NFA) using functional magnetic...