Endocrine Abstracts

Cushing’s tumours are ACTH-producing neoplasms of the pituitary gland. Their ACTH-oversecretion is autonomous and does not respond to the canonical inhibition of the hence also elevated cortisol. Current research in identifying new drug targets is mainly focused on designing therapeuticals that directly inhibit ACTH over-secretion from the adenoma. Serum and glucocorticoid-induced kinase 1 (Sgk1) is an early target gene of glucocorticoids in all cells studied. It is a PKB...

Background: Increased liver and cardiac fat are common in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and associated with increased risc for liver fibrosis and cardiovascular events. The effect of a DPP-4 inhibitor vildagliptin on the fat content of the liver and heart has not been evaluated.Methods: A total of 40 patients, 20 males and 20 females, treated at our diabetes metabolic unit of the Medical University of Vienna with gliptins underwent magnet...

Glucocorticoids act directly on pancreatic islets suppressing insulin secretion from the beta cells through a genomic mechanism of slow onset. We present here data on immediate actions of dexamethasone on two models of insulin secretion: RINm5F and INS-1 beta cell lines. Under normal glucose concentrations, dexamethasone rapidly (within minutes) decreased insulin secretion about 30%. Under hypoglycaemic conditions (glucose reduced to 50% for 1 hour) dexamethasone increased ins...

Oxytocin is a hormone and neurotransmitter with antiinflammatory and neuroimmune-modulatory properties. Physiological states of elevated plasma oxytocin levels are associated with reduced hypothalamic–pituitaty–adrenal response to different stressors. We examined the effect of exogenous oxytocin administration on bacterial endotoxin induced innate immune responses in humans. Ten healthy men received in a randomized, placebo-controlled, cross-over design (1) placebo, ...

The Austrian Acromegaly Registry is an initiative of the Austrian Society for Endocrinology and Metabolism. This database includes 607 patients (54% females) followed in twelve centers. Mean treatment period is 10.7 years (range 0–50 years), the total number of patient-years is 6470. Here we report gender-specific differences in the presentation, therapy and biochemical control of acromegaly in patients included in this registry.Mean age at diagnosi...

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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...

The transcription factor and proto-oncogene GLI1 is the terminal mediator of the Hedgehog signalling pathway which is involved in developmental processes, stem cell maintenance and cell proliferation. Although the pathway is mainly active during embryogenesis and tissue repair, it is frequently reactivated in several cancer types.Based on these findings we investigated the potential role of GLI1 in the pathogenesis of pituitary adenomas. GLI1 expression ...

Introduction: Growth hormone replacement (GHRT) during conception and pregnancy is an off-label treatment. Reports on pregnancy outcomes in women with growth hormone deficiency (GHD) are derived from single center studies with small sample sizes and show conflicting results.Methods/design: We evaluate pregnancies reported in the KIMS (Pfizer International Metabolic Database) patients on GHRT. KIMS includes 4651 women aged 15–50 years (followed for 1...

B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is a hormone secreted from the heart in response to volume load and serves clinically as a reliable biomarker in the diagnosis of cardiac dysfunction and heart failure. As patients with heart failure present an increased risk for developing diabetes, we aimed to investigate the role of BNP on parameters of glucose metabolism in a placebo-controlled crossover study performed in 10 healthy volunteers (25±1 years; BMI 23±1 kg/m2</su...