Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Benign insulinomas are the most prevalent cause of endogenous hyperinsulinaemic hypoglycaemia (EHH) in adults and due to their small size difficult to localise. Until now, the most sensitive test to localize the area of the potential insulinoma was the intra-arterial calcium stimulation test, an invasive procedure with its associated risk. In contrast to the other neuroendocrine tumors, benign insulinomas do not exhibit upregulated somatostatin receptors sutype 2 (...

Copeptin is secreted in equimolar amount to Arginine Vasopresin (AVP) but can easily be measured with a sandwich immunoassay. Both peptides, copeptin and AVP, show a high correlation. Accordingly, copeptin mirrors the amount of AVP in the circulation and its measurement provides an attractive marker in the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of vasopressin-dependent disorders of fluid homeostasis. This talk will first give some background about copeptin in general and then hi...

The differential diagnosis of hypotonic polyuria is a frequent problem in clinical practice. Three fundamentally different types of defects have to be differentiated: central diabetes insipidus characterized by a lack of the antidiuretic hormone arginine vasopressin; nephrogenic diabetes insipidus characterized by renal insensitivity to arginine vasopressin; and primary polydipsia due to primary excess of fluid intake. The differentiation is crucial as treatment differs substa...

Copeptin and arginine vasopressin (AVP) derive from a common precursor molecule and show equimolar secretion and response to osmotic, haemodynamic and stress-related stimuli. Plasma concentrations of copeptin and AVP in relation to serum osmolality are highly correlated. In contrast to AVP, which can be difficult to measure, copeptin is stable in plasma and can be easily measured with a sandwich immunoassay. For this reason, copeptin has emerged as a promising marker for the d...

Background: Today, GLP-1 receptor agonists have great clinical importance in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity. Furthermore, GLP-1 seems to play a significant role in sodium and water homeostasis. Recent findings investigating long-term effects of treatment with GLP-1 receptor agonists showed a reduction of fluid intake irrespective of food consumption. To our knowledge, data regarding physiological mechanisms that could explain these observations are inconclusive. ...

Introduction/Background: Gender differences affect the treatment of several diseases in both male and female patients. However, the influence of gender on treatment decisions and outcome in neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) has scarcely been investigated. Aims: Comparison of tumor characteristics, treatment decisions and outcome of patients with NENs, stratified by genderMaterial and Methods: Retrospective analysis of the SwissNET co...

Background: Epidemiologocal data suggest an continuous increase in thyroid carcinoma diagnosis. Therefore, thyroidectomy rates are projected to increase world-wide in exponential scale. In Switzerland, the institutional number of thyroidectomies varies, however there is no data yet on the association between institutional thyroidectomy volume and clinical outcome.Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of adult inpatients in Swiss hospitals using a nation-wide...

Background: Incidence of thyroidectomies and awareness to postoperative quality measures have both increased in the last decade. Gender-specific indications and variations in clinical outcomes of patients undergoing thyroidectomy in Switzerland are of interest.Methods: We cross-sectionally compared administrative nationwide patient-level data for length of hospital stay (LOS), intensive care unit (ICU) admission, 30-day readmissions rates, and other qual...

Background: The spectrum of polyuria-polydipsia syndrome (PPS) includes diabetes insipidus (central or nephrogenic) and primary polydipsia. In clinical practice the differential diagnosis particularly of central diabetes insipidus (cDI) and primary polydipsia (PP) is often difficult. The current gold standard – the water deprivation test (WDT) with or without vasopressin (AVP) measurements – lacks reliable diagnostic accuracy. Arginine infusion is known to stimulate ...

Introduction: Hypocalcemia has been linked to a decreased myocardial performance and even congestive heart failure, while acute chest-pain as leading symptom of hypocalcemia is an unusual presentation.Case report: A 29-year-old Caucasian man presented to the emergency department with relapsing chest-pain since several days, lasting seconds sometimes lasting several minutes, radiating to the left shoulder and combined with mild tingling in the neck. A det...