Endocrine Abstracts

Reproduction is our biological reason for being. Evolution has shaped us via countless millennia with this one purpose in mind. Our development from an early embryo through to adulthood is geared to making us fit to reproduce, a process that is closely connected to nutrition and energy stores. Seasonal and other fluctuations in food supply has been a key evolutionary shaper of the reproductive process, as illustrated by seasonal breeding species. Humans have echoes of this sea...

One of the success stories of modern medicine is the high cure rate of common childhood cancers. After an early period of denial, the existence of longterm complications, predominantly treatment-related, is acknowledged. By 2010 one in 250 of the adult population was a longterm survivor of childhood cancer. In 2014 420,000 childhood cancer survivors were estimated in the USA alone. Subsequently Moustoufi-Moab et al. (2016) reviewed 14,000 survivors of childhood cancer...

Puberty is a major event in human development that impacts the individual, the family and society in general, but with exception of its endocrinology the fundamental biology underlying the process is poorly understood. Puberty is the result of the complete activation of the pituitary-gonadal axis that, in man, is triggered by re-augmentation of pulsatile hypothalamic GnRH release after approximately a decade of pre-pubertal development during which time this mode of neuropepti...

The majority of patients with Cushing’s syndrome are ACTH-dependent, but the diagnosis of ACTH-dependence, and then the differential diagnosis between Cushing’s disease and the ectopic ACTH syndrome, is dependent on the measurement of ACTH. In the mammalian adult anterior pituitary, POMC is cleaved into a variety of products including the ‘normal’ ACTH(1-39). In the pars intermedia (present in the human fetus and most mammals), ACTH is cleaved further by th...