Endocrine Abstracts

Acute hyponatremia can cause death if cerebral edema is not treated promptly. Conversely, if chronic hyponatremia is corrected too rapidly, osmotic demyelination may ensue, which also potentially is lethal. However, these severe complications of hyponatremia are relatively uncommon and often preventable. More commonly, hyponatremia predicts mortality in patients with advanced heart failure or liver cirrhosis. In these conditions, it generally is assumed that hyponatremia refle...

Background: Families with inherited forms of diabetes insipidus (DI) have been described since the mid 19th century. Depending on the involved gene, the disorder is transmitted in autosomal dominant, autosomal recessive, or X-linked fashion.Nephrogenic DI: Patients typically have a severe phenotype manifesting shortly after birth. They are most often males with X-linked disease due to variations in the vasopressin V2 receptor (AVPR2) gene. Rarely, variat...

Human health is influenced by diet composition as well as total energy consumption; however, the circuits that control hunger and food-seeking in general are better understood than the interoceptive mechanisms that lead to consumption of specific nutrients, though the latter may impact both total energy intake and the health quality of food choices. Thus, a better understanding of the biological basis of palatable nutrient appetite is needed to improve diet quality and human h...