Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: There is an increasing awareness for intrinsic imperfections of endocrine replacement therapy affecting general well-being in the long-term. For thyroid hormone, many factors affect the variable responses to hormone replacement, like common genetic variations in deiodinase and thyroid hormone transport proteins, and the inability to provide adequate individual combined T4 and T3 therapy. Despite levothyroxine (L-T4)...

Purpose: Recent reports strongly suggest that at least some cases of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) may be closely associated with IgG4-related disease. In the present study we aimed to find out, whether the measurement of serum IgG4 allows for an identification of distinct types of HT, with different clinical, sonographic and serologic characteristics.Methods: The group studied consisted of 53 patients with HT and 28 healthy individuals. All the part...

Introduction: The effects of mild subclinical hypothyroidism (SH; TSH <10 mU/l) on metabolic outcomes are unclear. This may relate to differences in aetiology, including thyroid autoimmunity or genetic factors such as TSH-receptor mutations (TSHR-M) and FOXE1 polyalanine tract length (FOXE1–PTL) polymorphisms, which are associated with altered thyroid function. We hypothesised that the metabolic manifestations of SH may depend upon its aetiology.<p class="abstext"...

Context: Several specific transcriptional factors, in view of their important role in thyroid organogenesis and thyroid specific gene expression, would be strong candidate genes for the etiology of TD. The homeobox transcription factor NKX2.5 was thought to be only required for the organogenesis of the heart tube. However, NKX2.5−/− embryos also exhibited a smaller outgrowing thyroid bud. Indeed, several loss ...

Many conditions may interfere with intestinal absorption of levothyroxine (L-T4). In addition, it has been demonstrated a failure in the normalisation of TSH values in patients consuming L-T4 tablets with coffee or with water followed by coffee taken shortly afterwards. Recent studies showed that oral liquid L-T4 could remove the problem of L-T4 malabsorption by coffee and f...

Introduction: Hypothyroidism (hT) is a very common disease that can affect inpatients prognosis. We analysed the clinical profile of patients with hT admitted to Internal Medicine using a large clinical-administrative database.Methods: A descriptive analysis based on the minimum-data-set database of the Spanish National health System of patients who were discharged from the services of Internal Medicine with the diagnoses of hT during 2005–2012 was ...

Introduction: Subclinical hypothyroidism appears to be related with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. It was our objective to evaluate the relationship between autoimmune thyroiditis, subclinical hypothyroidism, and cardiovascular risk factors.Methods: We evaluated thyroid function tests, autoimmunity, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, ApoA1, ApoB, Lp(a), homocysteine, high sensibility CPR, folic acid, vitamin...

Rationale and hypothesis: Autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 1 (APS1) is a rare autosomal recessive disease which is characterised by chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis and multiple autoimmune endocrinopathies and results from mutations in the autoimmune regulator (AIRE) gene. Approximately 80% of APS1 patients present with hypoparathyroidism which is suggested to result from aberrant immune responses against the parathyroid gland. As patients typically display org...

Introduction: The Thr92Ala polymorphism of deiodinase 2 (DIO2) is associated with increased expression in the brain of genes associated with oxidative stress, and may predict favourable response to combination thyroxine (L-T4) plus triiodothyronine (T3) therapy. We examined whether the Thr92Ala polymorphism (rs225014) was associated with differences in thyroid hormone parameters, health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) and cognitive functio...

Background: The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) cluster is a genetic region that has been associated with multiple autoimmune disorders, also with autoimmune thyroid diseases. Plenty attempts to establish the significance of class II HLA-DR in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) development were undertaken in the past; however, reports are rather divergent. This might be caused by different criteria used to diagnose HT. There is however an alternative hypothesis, according to whic...