Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) allows classification of subjects in 3 groups, depending on glycaemia 120 minutes after 75 g glucose ingestion: normal (glycaemia < 1.4 g/L), glucose intolerant (1.4–2 g/L) and diabetic (>2 g/L). Five insulin profiles associated with different incidence rates of diabetes over 10 years of follow-up have also previously been described. Insulin measurement is very sensible to hemolysis and can advantageously be replace...

Introduction: Testosterone circulates under different forms in blood, mainly bound to proteins i.e. Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG) and albumin. Free testosterone (FT), the biologically active form, represents 2% of total testosterone (TT). FT measurement is mainly indicated when TT level is discordant with clinical picture but remains technically challenging. Indeed, as for all free hormones, gold standard method relies on equilibrium dialysis, unusable in routine. Direct...

Introduction: Biotin (vitamin B8) is a coenzyme of carboxylases involved in many metabolic pathways and also used in therapeutics as a dietary supplement (diffuse alopecia)(<30 mg/day), in the treatment of rare congenital enzymatic deficiencies (5–40 mg/day) or more recently in the treatment of progressive multiple sclerosis at higher doses (300 mg/day). At such high doses, interferences with thyroid hormones assays using biotin-streptavidin amplification system were ...

Placenta is an endocrine organ, secreting steroids (progesterone [P4], estrogens) and hCG, thanks to villous tissu (cytotrophoblasts [VCT] and syncytiotrophoblast [ST]). P4 is required for implantation and maintenance of pregnancy. P4 is synthetized from maternal cholesterol thanks to mitochondrial transporter MLN64 and P450SCC and HSD3B1 enzymes. We aimed to characterize P4 production in human placenta during VCTs differentiation into ST in vitro. VCTs isolated from ...