Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Many causes of malabsorbtion of levothyroxine (LT4) in patients with hypothyroidism have been thoroughly described in literature. Pseudomalabsorption, poor compliance of the patient is most common cause of failure of LT4 and/or liothyronine (LT3) treatment.Case report: 27 years old woman, normopondeal, presented from the age of 11 years for short stature. Further investigations found pluritrope pituitary insufficiency ...

Introduction: Patients with hypoparathyroidism (hypoPT) suffer from a number of complaints and reduced quality of life (QoL) besides having serum values for disease-specific parameters in the target range. To be able to quantify symptoms in hypoPT patients we lately developed a disease-specific questionnaire, the Hypoparathyroidism patient questionnaire with 28 items (HPQ28). The aim of this study was to present normative values for the HPQ28.Methods: A ...

Introduction: Clinical experience with neuroendocrine tumours (NET) is difficult to acquire because they are rare and heterogeneous. The impact of recently published guidelines on diagnosis and therapy of NET is not known. The German NET-Registry offers a unique possibility to analyse data on diagnostic/therapeutic performance in a wide range of institutions. This study posed three questions: who provides the care for patients with NET; do the diagnostic/therapeutic procedures...

Recent studies indicating that normokaliemic primary aldosteronism (PA) is a more frequent cause of hypertension than previously expected led to an increased interest in biochemical screening strategies. We investigated biochemical diagnostic strategies used in different academic centres for patients documented in the German National Conn’s Registry. Data from 7 centres in 5 cities have been entered into a database by trained personnel. For analysis, results from 522 pati...

Due to its rarity, initial endocrine abnormalities in acromegaly are difficult to investigate in a large cohort, especially with respect to cofounding variables. We searched the German Acromegaly Register for data on the first presentation of patients with acromegaly.Up to November 2005, 1485 patients with acromegaly had been entered into the database. Male patients demonstrated significantly higher random GH (21.0 (0.2–620.0) ng/ml, median (range))...

Background: Endogenous Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is rare with an estimated yearly incidence of 1–3 patients/million. CS describes a group of diseases that have in common an excess secretion of glucocorticoids which results in a characteristic clinical phenotype. Severe courses of Cushing’s syndrome are characterized by a break-down of protein catabolism translating into clinical consequences including muscle weakness. While remission of CS is achievable by surgica...

Background: About 3% of all children are short statured. Clinically GH deficiency (GHD) or idiopathic short stature (ISS) is frequently diagnosed. GH (GH−) treatment, which is primarily indicated for GHD patients, is provided not only to increase height, but also to improve psychological functioning and raise health related quality of life. The present study examines these psychosocial outcomes in young German patients and their parents, and analyzes differences accordin...

Context: Acromegaly is a rare disease caused by excessive growth hormone (GH) secretion, mostly induced by pituitary adenomas. The care of pregnant women with acromegaly is challenging, in part due to existing clinical data being limited and not entirely consistent with regard to potential risks for mother and child.Objective: To retrospectively examine data on pregnancy and maternal as well as neonatal outcomes in patients with acromegaly.<p class="...

Introduction: Hypercholesterolemia is frequently found in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Cholesterol is metabolized from 7-dehydrocholesterol by 7-dehydrocholesterol reductase (DHCR7) from 7-dehydrocholesterol, a precursor of pre-vitamin D3. Therefore single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the DHCR7 gene could regulate cholesterol levels and concentrations of vitamin D metabolites (25(OH)D3 or 1,25(OH)2D3). For this purpose we investiga...

Objective: The German KIMS Database is a national surveillance study for evaluation of efficacy and safety of growth hormone (GH) replacement therapy in adults with GH deficiency (GHD) in clinical practice.Patients: The analysis was performed using data of 1425 consecutively documented adult patients (777 men, 648 women) with GHD enrolled in KIMS Germany. The present report examined baseline and long term data (>48 months, range: 48–161 month) f...