Endocrine Abstracts

Western countries are being confronted with a disturbing increase in the incidence of most immune disorders, including autoimmune and allergic diseases. Converging epidemiological evidence indicates that this increase is linked to improvement of the socio-economic level of these countries. Epidemiological and clinical data support the hygiene hypothesis according to which the decrease of infections observed over the last three decades is the main cause of the incessant increas...

The cataloguing of human genes and determination of common genetic variation in the human genome presents the major challenge of determining how inherited genetic variation affects our health. Epidemiologists are responsible for assessing the proportion of specific diseases associated with particular genotypes, and how these genotypes interact with environmental and lifestyle factors in disease causation. The advent of the capacity to perform Genome-Wide Association Studies ha...

The incidence of type 1A diabetes has been doubling approximately every two decades in multiple developed countries. This implies important environmental determinants that are either increasing or decreasing and influencing overall incidence. Recent studies indicate that extreme genetic risk can be defined for major defined genetic subsets. For instance, siblings of a patient with type 1A diabetes who have the highest risk HLA alleles DR3/4-DQ2/8 and in addition have inherited...

The prevalence of overt autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) is no less than around 2–3% in the adult population and increases with age. Subclinical thyroid autoimmunity is around 10 times higher, with a female preponderance. Although the major phenotypes (Graves’ disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis – with or without goitre, and chronic asymptomatic thyroiditis) are well characterized our knowledge of the aetiology of these disorders is incomplete. Studying twins...