Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Emerging evidence shows that diabetes mellitus causes structural and functional alterations in the brain. Recent studies have shown that diabetes may induce reductions in N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) and glutamate concentrations in the cortical grey matter, but few studies have performed the neurochemical profiling of other brain regions in patients with diabetes. Hence, the aim was to investigate brain metabolites in other brain regions of adults with diabetes.<p ...

Background: Gonadal dysgenesis (GD) is a congenital disorder of sex development resulting in gonadal dysfunction caused by a variety of underlying genetic aberrations. Psychiatric morbidity is more common in women with GD in comparison to the general population but whether this is the result of a hormonal disbalance is unknown. However, psychotic symptoms due to abrupt changes in blood estrogen levels have been commonly reported. The aim is to report the first case of a psycho...

Introduction: Within the high prevalence of male infertility there is the rare 45,X/46,XY mosaicism, associated or not with hypogonadism. The phenotypes of this genetical disorder present with a wide variability ranging from Turner stigmata to apparent normal male.Case report: Two men who presented with azoospermia in the context of couple infertility were subsequently found to be affected by 45,X/46,XY mosaicism. Physical examination revealed a complete...

The use of LC–MS/MS quantitative methods in clinical and research laboratories is becoming a well established reality that may overcome specificity and accuracy limits of immunoassays. Nevertheless, among different LC–MS/MS methods an agreement on the values that are to be considered normal or pathologic has not been reached yet, and this is mainly due to differences in LC–MS/MS methods, to the poor or absent availability of reference material and to the selecti...

Obesity is characterized by an increase of endocannabinoid circulating levels as anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoyl-glycerol (2AG). Whether these lipids represent a biomarker of dysmetabolism or merely reflect the fat mass spill-over is still unclear. After generating rigorous, gender specific, plasma reference intervals by 2D-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, we defined the 97.5thcentile of endocannabinoid distribution in the normal population as the cut-off ab...

A number of publications recently provided measurements of plasma ECs by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS), however the reported circulating levels in normal subjects are scattered in a very wide range of concentrations. A quantitative LC–MS/MS method for anandamide (AEA), palmitoylethanolamide (PEA), oleoylethanolamyde (OEA) and 2arachidonoyl-glycerol (2AG), chromatographically resolved by its inactive isomer 1AG, was validated in house....