Endocrine Abstracts

Critical clinical changes of pulmonary function and weight occur in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) antecedent to the development of frank Diabetes Mellitus (DM). Impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) signifies diminished Insulin secretion and increased peripheral insulin resistance, correlating with worse clinical status, under nutrition and impaired pulmonary function. Insulin therapy has been associated with improvement in anthropometric data and an arrest in decline in force...

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and Impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT) in patients with cystic fibrosis(CF) signifies a six fold rise in mortality and is associated with declining pulmonary function. The pathophysiology is multifactorial but largely due to Insulinopenia which is due to global islet cell fibrosis and accompanied by loss of islet alpha cells. Insulin treatment improves weight, the bacterial milieu, and lung function but is associated with hypoglycaemia. These patients may ...

Background: Surgery, sometimes supported by adjunctive radiotherapy (RT) are the treatments of choice for patients with non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFA). Previous studies have implicated these treatments in deficits of cognitive function, particularly memory and executive functioning, although this research has often been confounded by the inclusion of patients with hormone producing tumours. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of RT on psychometric funct...

Men with Type 2 diabetes have a high prevalence of low testosterone levels. Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and glycaemic control in men with Type 2 diabetes. TRT also reduces fat mass and central obesity. The androgen receptor CAG repeat polymorphism length (AR CAG) correlates positively with transcriptional activity of the receptor as well as body fat, and insulin levels in healthy men. Most studies have not found an assoc...

A minority of patients with hyperthyroidism resulting from relapsed Grave’s disease or autonomous nodules refuse definitive treatment with surgery or radioiodine, and request long-term anti-thyroid medication. There are few data concerning the safety and efficacy of this therapeutic modality.We performed a retrospective analysis of 13 patients (8 relapsed Grave’s disease, 5 toxic MNG), 12F, median age 60 (31–76) yrs and duration of long-te...

A 27-year-old woman presented with severely symptomatic Graves and ophthalmopathy (FT4 49.1; TSI 53). Despite 60 mg carbimazole and 240 mg propranolol she required admission to control her symptoms and thyroid function, changing to propylthiouracil 800 mg daily with propranolol (FT4 19.9). Whilst considering thyroidectomy a 6-week pregnancy was confirmed. She relapsed (? compliance) and was admitted at 14 weeks with hyperemesis gravidarum (FT4 >77.2), which responded to an...

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is associated with increased prevalence of low serum testosterone levels in men [1]. Testosterone levels in men are known to be positively correlated with insulin sensitivity and negatively with visceral obesity. We performed a double blind placebo controlled crossover study to determine the effect of testosterone treatment on insulin resistance and glycaemic control in 24 hypogonadal men (10 patients treated with insulin) above age of 30 with Type 2 d...

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is associated with increased incidence of low serum testosterone levels in men. Testosterone is known to be positively correlated with insulin sensitivity. Rosiglitazone is an insulin sensitizing agent that reduces insulin resistance by binding to PPAR gamma receptor. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of Rosiglitazone on testosterone levels in hypogonadal men with Type 2 diabetes.This study was approved by BDG...

Antithyroid drug (ATD) resistant thyrotoxicosis raises difficult management issues. We describe three recent cases of apparent refractory thyrotoxicosis.Case 1: A 31 year old woman presented in July 2003 with thyrotoxicosis. Despite treatment with carbimazole (CBZ) 20 milligrams tds, serum free thyroxine (FT4) concentrations remained around 60 picomoles per litre (11-20). In October, CBZ dose was increased to 40 milligrams bd and dexamethasone 2 milligra...

Insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) and their binding proteins (IGFBPs) have important metabolic roles in the human body. IGFBP-3 (40 and 45 kD glycoforms) is the most abundant in serum, whereas IGFBP-2 (34 kD) and IGFBP-1 (29 kD) are present at lower concentrations.Most inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract are characterised by a cytokine- mediated inflammatory reaction, malnutrition and catabolism. The aim of this work was to detect possib...