Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Volumetric absorbent microsampling (VAMS) provides a less intrusive alternative to venepuncture when collecting blood samples for diagnostic testing. A small, precisely determined amount of capillary blood from a single finger-prick is absorbed into a medium for storage, from which it can later be extracted and analysed. In this study, we developed methods to measure four commonly requested endocrine/bone biomarkers for finger-prick blood samples analysis, and inve...

Higher short-term exercise-associated reproductive, psychological and bone health-related outcomes have been reported in women than men, although the reasons for this are poorly understood. The first, all-female transantarctic expedition provided a unique opportunity to perform an observational study examining concurrent effects of extreme exercise on pertinent hormonal axes to reproductive dysfunction and associated pathology. Body composition was measured by dual-energy xray...

Background: Low energy availability (LEA) in female athletes can result in HPG axis suppression. Basic military training (BMT) is physically arduous and associated with amenorrhoea and low-trauma fractures. We hypothesised that women undergoing BMT would demonstrate evidence of LEA and suppressed HPG function.Design: Prospective study of 61 women undertaking 11-month BMT. Subjects acted as their own controls at baseline (all measures). Body composition m...

Introduction: British Army recruits suffer from musculoskeletal injuries (MSI) during initial training. Up to 10% suffer skeletal stress fracture (SFx) resulting in lost training days and medical attrition. There is evidence to suggest that vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in the army. Our aim was to determine vitamin D metabolites (VDM) in recruits upon starting training, and health outcomes after a 14-week training programme.Methods: ...

We investigated the association between vitamin D metabolites and incidence of lower body (pelvis and lower limb) overuse musculoskeletal and bone stress injury in 1637 men and 530 women (22.6 ± 7.5 years), undergoing 12 weeks initial military training. We measured serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) and 24,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (24,25(OH)2D) by high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25(OH)2D) by...