Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: Growth hormone (GH) and sex hormone replacement therapy (SHRT) are standard treatment for patients with Turner syndrome (TS) that enhances bone mineral density (BMD), puberty, and quality of life. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of SHRT and GH on BMD in TS patients.Methods: Cross-sectional study was performed in LUHS Kauno Klinikos in 2014–2018. 27 females with TS were enrolled. BMD and Z score...

Background: Turner syndrome (TS) occurs in approximately 1 in 2500 live female births. The frequency of pregnancies in TS patients is 2-5%. However, these pregnancies are at high risk of recurrent miscarriage, malformations in the children and poor cardiovascular outcomes in pregnant TS females.Case presentation: A 34 year-old woman was diagnosed with TS (46XX/46Xr) at age 9. From 16 to 20 years old she was treated with sex hormone replacement therapy an...

Neuronal glucose and insulin signals are integrated by hypothalamic neurons to regulate energy balance. These signalling mechanisms are not clearly defined in the hypothalamus, and may be altered in obesity and diabetes. This study aimed to analyse quantitatively hypothalamic expression of candidate genes in signal transduction pathways and investigate dysregulation using Zucker and Zucker Diabetic Fatty (ZDF) models.Taqman RT-PCR was used to compare exp...

Peripheral metabolic signals such as leptin, glucose and insulin are integrated by neurons in the hypothalamus to regulate both short and long term energy balance. However, the signal transduction mechanisms by which neurons sense glucose and insulin levels are unclear and specific parts of the pathways may be distinct from those in the pancreas. The aim of this study was to quantitatively analyse hypothalamic expression of genes known to be involved in pancreatic glucose/insu...

Background: Incidental macroprolactinoma is an unsuspected prolactin-secreting pituitary adenoma larger than 1 cm that is discovered by an imaging test performed for an unrelated reason.Case presentation: A 25-year-old man was diagnosed with incidental macroprolactinoma (30.3×23.4×22.6 mm) following a head MRI scan after trauma. At the initial investigation, the patient had no complaints and denied any sexual dysfunction. Physical examination s...

Circadian rhythms in behaviours and gene expression are driven by the autonomously rhythmic cells of the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). In nocturnal rodents, restricting a daily meal to the lights-on phase, leads to entrainment of behaviour and gene expression in many extra-SCN hypothalamic nuclei and peripheral tissues. This anticipatory activity is independent of the SCN and is likely to arise from the activities of multiple hypothalamic centres including the do...

Agouti-related protein (AGRP) plays a key role in energy homeostasis with the carboxy-terminal domain acting as an endogenous antagonist of the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4-R). It has been suggested that the amino-terminal domain of AGRP binds to syndecan-3, allowing it to regulate local concentrations of AGRP at the MC4-R. This model assumes that AGRP is secreted as a full-length peptide. However, AGRP contains several consensus prohormone convertase cleavage sites: Lys52-Lys...