Endocrine Abstracts

A 68-year-old woman presented with hypertension, oedema, weight gain and moon face. She had signs of proximal muscle weakness, thinning of scalp hair and bruising on her legs. Initial tests showed 24 hour urine free cortisol elevated at 946 nmol (0–300 nmol).Serum cortisol showed no circadian fluctuation (0900: 1094 nmol/l, 2400 hrs: 886 nmol/l) and no suppression by dexamethasone (2 mg/24 h for 48 h: 1067 nmol/l). ACTH levels were slightly raised (...

A 36-year-old male presented to neurologists with tiredness and clumsy gait. Examination revealed normal cranial nerves, spastic paraparesis and bilateral extensor plantar response, absent vibration sense and ataxia. He was thought to have an inherited form of Spino-Cerebellar ataxia. His mother had developed similar neurological problems in her 50 s, and his maternal uncle had Addison’s disease.He was referred to endocrinologists because of the fin...

Pituitary apoplexy is an acute medical emergency but there are no evidence based management guidelines, especially for neurosurgical intervention.A 35-year old male presented with sudden onset severe headache. On examination blood pressure was 180/120 without any lateralising neurological signs. He appeared acromegalic with a short history of enlarging hands & feet. Emergency CT scan and a MR scan later confirmed haemorrhagic pituitary adenoma, 3 cm ...

Management of patients with gender dysphoria (transsexualism) is often difficult, and most patients are routinely managed outwith specialist gender identity clinics. We carried out a retrospective case-note survey of 21 patients attending a routine adult endocrine clinic (ages 24–64 y; 13 male-to-female (MF) and 8 female-to-male (FM)).All MF and 6 of 8 FM patients were on hormonal treatment. 6 of 13 MF patients took oestrogen alone, 6 used oestrogen...