Endocrine Abstracts

Case history: A 44 year old black African woman was referred to the endocrinology clinic for investigation of abnormal thyroid function tests. She had initially presented with palpitations and sweats. She had no significant past medical history and was not taking any prescribed medications or over the counter preparations. On examination, she was clinically euthyroid and did not have any abnormal findings of note.Investigations: Biochemical investigation...

Background: Abdominal fat accumulation is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, whereas lower body fat is protective. Erythroferrone (ERFE) is a recently discovered protein that increases intestinal iron absorption by inhibiting hepcidin. ERFE has been shown to inhibit BMP2 signalling and work from our group has shown that BMP2 is a differentiation factor for subcutaneous abdominal, but not gluteal, adipocytes. Because of this, we hypothesised that ERFE...

Aims: Body composition is associated with bone mineral density, but the precise associations between body fat distribution and bone mineral density (BMD) remain unclear. We hypothesised that the regional adipose tissue depots would have independent associations with BMD.Methods: We used data from 4900 healthy individuals aged 30–50 years old from the Oxford Biobank to analyse associations between regional fat mass and lean mass with total BMD.<p...