Endocrine Abstracts

Cushing’s syndrome is characterized by a diverse set of clinical manifestations, including hypertension, apparent obesity and metabolic aberrations such as diabetes, dyslipidaemia, ultimately leading to the metabolic syndrome. AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) is an intracellular energy sensor. It integrates nutritional and hormonal signals by switching on catabolic pathways, such as fatty acid oxidation and glycolysis and switching off anabolic pathways, such as fatty ...

Pituitary adenomas are present in ∼25% of autopsy samples, and recent studies have also suggested that clinically important pituitary adenomas are some 5 times more common than previously recognised. Acromegaly is almost always due to a sporadic growth-hormone secreting pituitary adenoma, but familial acromegaly has been reported occasionally. Linkage and loss of heterozygosity studies have shown that it is caused by a tumour suppressor gene located at 11q13; very recent...