Endocrine Abstracts

Normal functioning of the thyroid is of profound importance for lifetime health due to its role in hormone production. Dysfunction of the thyroid is associated with severe congenital pathologies, some of them appearing in childhood. For example, over half the babies born with congenital hypothyroidism appear completely normal and have no symptoms. However, early diagnosis of thyroid defects is lacking mainly due to a poor understanding of the development of the tissue in utero...

Background: The sodium/iodide symporter (NIS) frequently shows diminished targeting to the plasma membrane (PM) in differentiated thyroid cancer, resulting in suboptimal radioiodine treatment and poor prognosis. However, the mechanisms which govern the endocytosis of NIS away from the PM – its sole site of transport activity – are ill-defined, and may be of direct therapeutic potential. We previously showed that the proto-oncogene PBF binds NIS and enhances its inter...

Introduction: Childhood papillary thyroid carcinoma (CPTC), despite bilateral thyroidectomy (BT), nodal resection and radioiodine remnant ablation (RRA), recurs within neck nodal metastases (NNM) in >30% within 20 postoperative years. However, these NNM are usually treated with re-operation or further radioiodine; US-guided ethanol ablation (EA) may be considered (j.sempedsurg.2020.150920) for patients with limited numbers of NNMMethods: We studied l...

University Hospitals Dorset (UHD) has over 1,000 thyroid patient contacts annually. These are primarily patients with autoimmune hyperthyroidism and are treated by titration of Carbimazole. Dose adjustments are made by a healthcare professional (HCP) based on the results of thyroid function tests. Once the test results are available, the HCP decides on a prescription dose and communicates this to the patient, which is time-consuming and introduces delays. This project aims to ...

Increased mammary metabolism is critical for initiating lactation during postpartum days 1-4. We utilised clinical and cellular approaches to investigate whether thyroid hormones, which promote lactation in rodents, are involved in initiating human lactation and regulating mammary metabolism. We recruited n=30 pregnant women following informed consent and measured serum thyroid hormones (free T4 and TSH) at 36 weeks’ gestation and on postpartum day 4. Free T4 inc...

Background and Aims: Relapse in Graves’ disease (GD) often occurs after antithyroid drugs (ATD) are withdrawn, however there is a lack of robust predictive biomarkers for relapse and little mechanistic insight into its pathophysiology. B-cell related cytokines and chemokines may reflect humoral immune activity and therefore be predictive of outcome. The purpose of this study was to evaluate serum B-cell activating factor (BAFF), Chemokine ligand 13 (CXCL13), A-proliferati...