Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Overweight and obesity is a worldwide chronic disease affecting 2 billion adults and millions of children. In diet-induced obesity (DIO), current treatments are not always effective or suitable for all patients due to the complexity of obesity and its associated health complications. Recently, the potential of developing weight loss therapy by targeting the gut microbiota has been raised. Previously, we have shown that mice overexpressing insulin-like growth fact...

Background: In obesity the relationship between white adipose tissue expansion and neovascularisation becomes uncoupled leading to inadequate perfusion of adipose tissue. Under these circumstances the secretory profile of adipocytes becomes metabolically unfavourable and pro-atherosclerotic. Therefore, targeting white adipose tissue may provide a potential therapeutic strategy to combat the negative metabolic and cardiovascular consequences of obesity. Here, we validated a mur...

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common co-morbidity in patients with heart failure and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (HF-REF), and is associated with adverse prognosis. Subgroup analyses of randomized controlled trials suggest patients with DM benefit prognostically from beta-adrenoreceptor blockers (BB) and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEi). However, it remains unclear whether escalating doses of these age...

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common co-morbidity in patients with heart failure and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (HF-REF), and is associated with adverse prognosis. Subgroup analyses of randomized controlled trials suggest patients with DM benefit prognostically from beta-adrenoreceptor blockers (BB) and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEi). However, it remains unclear whether escalating doses of these age...

Endothelial dysfunction is a key step in the initiation of atherosclerosis, resulting from a decrease in bioavailability of nitric oxide (NO). IGF-1 may play a part in regulation of NO production via the PI3-kinase/Akt/eNOS pathway. We have investigated whether disturbances of this pathway occur in dietary-induced obesity.Obesity was induced in mice fed a high fat diet for 20 weeks (n=12), compared to chow fed controls, with an age-related increas...

Type 2 diabetes is preceded by insulin resistance, followed by increased endothelial cell production of superoxide and reduction in bioavailability of the vasoprotective signalling molecule, nitric oxide (NO). We demonstrated in preclinical models that type 2 diabetes also causes resistance to insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) mediated glucose lowering and endothelial NO release. This study aimed to examine the effect of the endothelial cell-specific combination of insulin ...