Endocrine Abstracts

Statins are among the most widely prescribed medications worldwide, decreasing the risk of cardiovascular diseases by reducing cholesterol levels. However, statins also increase the risk of incident type 2 diabetes (T2D), disproportionately affecting women compared to men. Inflammation has emerged as a central factor underpinning T2D pathology, with macrophages playing a significant role. Statins have been found to influence macrophage inflammatory responses, and this has been...

The importance of the Liver X receptors (LXRs) as a critical modulators of metabolic homeostasis and immunity in health and disease has been mainly gleaned from studies evaluating the consequences of their pharmacological or genetic manipulation. We previously showed LXRα is phosphorylated upon cholesterol loading. It is however unknown whether post-translational modifications of the receptor modulate diet-induced responses and affect metabolic diseases with an important ...

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a spectrum of progressive liver diseases driven in part by macrophages, occurring in the absence of excessive alcohol consumption that ranges from simple steatosis to non-alcoholic steato-hepatitis (NASH), ultimately progressing to fibrosis/cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. NAFLD is associated with insulin resistance and confers an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Pre-menopausal women are protected against...

Background: Insulin resistance and ageing are risk factors for the development of type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis. Insulin signalling in macrophages affects their inflammatory responses and foam cell formation capacity, yet the mechanisms linking these remain unclear. Recent evidence has emerged linking macrophage lipid metabolism and inflammatory response such as an interferon-cholesterol pathway flux axis. Insulin has been shown to directly regulate chol...

Authors 1-4 contributed equally to this work.Background: Insulin resistance is the central defining feature of type 2 diabetes and increases with age. People with type 2 diabetes are at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), Alzheimer’s disease and arthritis. Macrophages are phagocytotic leukocytes which play a central role in the development of type 2 diabetes and the chronic inflammatory di...

Introduction: Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), acting via similar signalling pathways to insulin, enhances glucose uptake and nitric oxide (NO) production. Observational studies suggest a role for (IGF-1) in insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease. To investigate this further we used a murine model with heterozygous knockout of the IGF-1 receptor.Methods: Metabolic tolerance tests were performed in vivo on unanaesthetised mice, heterozy...