Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Since the last decade, the disease pattern has significantly changed around the world. Non-communicable diseases, most commonly diabetes mellitus, have become the main threat to global health. The incidence of diabetes mellitus type 2 (DM2) is rising steadily, accounting for about two-thirds of deaths in Germany. Based on a prevalence of 9 million diabetic patients per year, DM2 constitutes a considerable medical and economic burden in Germany. However, the healthc...

Promotion of brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity or browning of white adipose tissue has shown great potential as anti-obesity strategy in numerous preclinical models. The discovery of active BAT in humans and the recent advances in the understanding of human BAT biology and function have sparked this field of research. Pharmacological stimulation of energy expenditure to counteract obesity has always been an intriguing therapeutic concept; the identification of the specific m...

Regarding the debate about whether we should still ablate all patients undergoing total thyroidectomy, the answer is no. Most thyroid cancer patients have an excellent prognosis with a normal life expectancy and among them most of them have a low risk of recurrence. The absence of ablation in patients with thyroid cancer of 1 centimeter or less (pT1a) is already widely applied, so, we are used not to ablate all thyroid cancer patients treated with total thyroidectomy. The ques...

Case History: A 55 year old woman with a BMI of 57.4 was referred to our service to assess her suitability for bariatric surgery given her psychiatric surgery. Her problems with weight began aged 8 when she was sexually abused. She saw a doctor aged 14 who prescribed amphetamines for her weight, and states her problems with drugs as an adult (LSD, cannabis, amphetamines) stemmed from this. She has a diagnosis of EUPD-borderline type, and was prescribed quetiapine which had kep...

Targeted therapies have been used for about 10 years in patients with radioactive iodine refractory differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) or metastatic medullary thyroid cancer (MTC). Decrease in tumor volume, improvement of symptoms, increase in progression free survivals have been observed with different drugs. So far, because of trial design and because of the long survival of patients with metastatic DTC or MTC, the benefit of these drugs on overall survival has not been dem...

Hepcidin is a small circulating 25-amino-acid cysteine-rich peptide first identified in human blood and urine. The hepcidin gene is expressed mainly in the hepatocytes, secreted in the circulation and cleared by the kidney. In mammals, convincing evidence indicates that hepcidin constitutes the master regulator of iron homeostasis; the circulating peptide acts to limit gastrointestinal iron absorption and serum iron by inhibiting dietary intestinal iron absorption and iron rec...

see P728....

The serum- and glucocorticoid-regulated kinase 1 (Sgk1) is a direct transcriptional target of glucocorticoids and is post-translationally activated by the insulin/IGF1 pathway. Distinct polymorphisms in the Sgk1 gene are associated with increased body weight and type 2 diabetes. Here we investigate the expression and regulation of Sgk1 in human obesity.In both omental and subcutaneous human adipose tissue, Sgk1 expression is significantly increased in 20...

Serum and glucocorticoid-induced kinase 1 (Sgk1) is an early transcriptional target of glucocorticoids with antiapoptotic effects. Sgk1 becomes active after phosphorylation by growth factors such as insulin and IGF1 through the PI3 kinase/PDK1 pathway. Activated Sgk1 increases the cellular uptake of glucose by increasing the membrane abundance of glucose transporters GLUT1 and GLUT4. Here we present data on the expression and regulation of Sgk1 in adipose tissue using three di...

Achieving pregnancy through in vitro fertilization requires a minimum number of oocytes recovered during egg retrieval. These oocytes come from ovarian hyperstimulation that allows the entire oocyte cohort to mature. In physiology in a natural cycle, a dozen follicles are recruited at the beginning of the menstrual cycle under the action of the elevation of the FSH (the « FSH window »). Then, follicles secrete estradiol through aromatase under the action of FSH. By n...