Endocrine Abstracts

Graves’ orbitopathy (GO) or thyroid eye disease (TED) is an autoimmune condition most common in people with hyperthyroid Graves’ disease. Severe GO may cause blindness due to optic compression following expansion of the orbital contents. In many patients, the persistent disfigured appearance of the eyes is a source of significant psychological distress and effective treatments are lacking. This has driven efforts to identify novel therapeutic options resulting in pro...

Graves’ orbitopathy (GO) or thyroid eye disease (TED) is an autoimmune condition most common in people with hyperthyroid Graves’ disease. Severe GO may cause blindness due to optic compression following expansion of the orbital contents. In many patients, the persistent disfigured appearance of the eyes is a source of significant psychological distress and effective treatments are lacking. This has driven efforts to identify novel therapeutic options resulting in pro...

Acromegalic congestive cardiac failure (CCF) is a serious and late complication of untreated acromegaly with associated high morbidity and mortality.1 Spontaneous recovery of end stage acromegalic CCF following autoinfarction of a somatotroph adenoma has not been previously reported.We report the case of a 61-year-old woman who presented with features of severe biventricular CCF and an acromegalic phenotype. Echocardiography revealed poor LV f...

Primary resistance to Cabergoline occurs in a minority of patients with lactotroph adenomas but the development of late resistance following initial response is an extremely rare phenomenon which has only been reported in very few cases.: We report the case of a 57 year old lady who was presented in 1997 with headaches and visual failure and was found to have a large pituitary mass with compression of the optic chiasm and invasion into the cavernous sinuses bilaterally. Serum ...

Background: Alemtuzumab (ALTZ) is a humanised monoclonal anti-CD52 antibody used as effective treatment for relapsing/remitting multiple sclerosis (MS), causing panlymphopenia with subsequent lymphocyte repopulation. Unfortunately, around 40% of patients develop secondary humoral autoimmunity, mainly affecting the thyroid gland. Anti-thyrotropin-receptor (TSHR) autoantibodies (TRAb) can stimulate (TSAb), block (TBAb) or not affect (‘neutral’) TSHR function, with TSAb...

Background: Alemtuzumab (ALTZ) is a humanised monoclonal anti-CD52 antibody used as effective treatment for relapsing/remitting multiple sclerosis (MS), causing panlymphopenia with subsequent lymphocyte repopulation. Unfortunately, around 40% of patients develop secondary humoral autoimmunity, mainly affecting the thyroid gland. Anti-thyrotropin-receptor (TSHR) autoantibodies (TRAb) can stimulate (TSAb), block (TBAb) or not affect (‘neutral’) TSHR function, with TSAb...

As known, an imbalance of the gut microbiota is associated with a higher risk for autoimmune diseases. Moreover the increased rates of autoimmunity reported in urban residential areas worldwide suggest a possible influence of diet. We report on the antibody response to food antigens in GD patients. Since 10% of celiac patients develop an autoimmune thyreopathy we focused on gliadin (DGP), transglutaminases (tTG) and 40 other food antigens (FA). Commercially available ELISA ass...

Introduction: The effects of maternal suboptimal gestational thyroid function (SGTF) on age 3 offspring’s cognitive function were investigated in the Controlled Antenatal Thyroid Screening (CATS) randomised trial, comparing SGTF mothers who received (SGTF-T), or didn’t (SGTF-U), levothyroxine during pregnancy. The analysis was repeated at age 9 in the CATS-II follow-up study, also including children of mothers with normal gestational thyroid function (NGTF). Here we ...

Context: Suboptimal thyroid function in pregnancy is associated with adverse obstetric outcomes but it is unclear whether levothyroxine treatment, initiated during pregnancy is beneficial.Design & Participants: Retrospective analysis of the Controlled Antenatal Thyroid Screening (CATS) study with obstetric outcomes obtained through data-linkage in the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank. We studied 13,224 pregnant women; 12,608 had ...

Objectives: The Controlled Antenatal Thyroid Screening (CATS) study I was a randomised trial investigating the effects of levothyroxine treatment for suboptimal gestational thyroid function (SGTF), evaluating mothers with normal gestational thyroid function (NGTF), SGTF who received (SGTF-T), or didn’t (SGTF-U), levothyroxine during pregnancy. The present follow-up study (CATS II) reports the long-term effects of SGTF and levothyroxine treatment on anthropometric and card...