Endocrine Abstracts

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrine disorder, affecting 10–18% of women of reproductive age. Based on the Rotterdam consensus, PCOS is diagnosed by at least two of the following three criteria: oligo- or anovulation, hyperandrogenism, and polycystic ovaries on ultrasound. Thus, four different phenotypes can be recognized. In addition, PCOS is also a metabolic disorder since many affected women present with obesity, insulin resistance and associa...

The classical diagnostic strategy of internal medicine, including medical history, physical examination and additional diagnostic test, is unable to assess the activity of the autonomous nervous system in detail and, consequently, has resulted in negligence of the involvement of the autonomic nervous system. Nonetheless, evidence is emerging that the autonomous nervous system is involved in the pathophysiology of complex diseases. These conditions include insulin resistance, t...

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The cardiovascular symptoms and signs of overt thyrotoxicosis are well known. These symptoms and signs may persist even after successful restoration of euthyroidism. Long-term, overt hyperthyroidism is associated with increased vascular mortality, from both cardiovascular and cerebrovascular causes, even in patients treated in the last 20 years. This mortality may particularly reflect an effect of thyroid hormone excess on cardiac rhythm, especially risk of atrial fibrillation...

Introduction: Thyroid isthmus has lack of normal parenchyma, and it connects both of thyroid lobes with lymphatic drainage. It is known that isthmic papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) presents frequent extrathyroidal extensions (ETE), multifocality and lymph node involvement. Therefore, many surgeons prefer total thyroidectomy and central compartment neck dissection (CCND) for the radical treatment of PTC located in thyroid isthmus. The purpose of this study is to figure out the c...

Prolactin is present in serum in a variety of forms defined by different molecular masses. Macroprolactin is the best-known variant, a high molecular mass (150–170 kD) form of prolactin usually representing a prolactin–IgG complex which reacts in immunoassays causing apparent hyperprolactinaemia. Big-prolactin is a smaller high molecular mass (50–60 kDa) form of prolactin found more commonly than macroprolactin; however, the origin and significance of big-prolac...

We have previously shown PTTG and PBF to be over-expressed in differentiated thyroid cancer and to be prognostic indicators for recurrence. Subsequently we reported PBF to be a transforming gene in vitro and tumourigenic in vivo. Since over-expression of PTTG results in the same findings, we examined whether PBF-induced tumourigenesis was an independent effect, or else a result of increased PTTG activity. Two HA-tagged mutants of PBF were generated, firstly subst...

We have previously shown that adults with partial GHD have increased total body and truncal fat mass, an adverse lipid profile, and insulin resistance. In this study we have gone on to analyse suggogate markers of vascular risk and carotid IMT. We defined GH status using the combination of two stimulation tests, the ITT and arginine stimulation test, in to patients with severe GHD (pGH<3 ng/ml, n=30) or GH insufficiency (pGH 3–7 ng/ml, n=24). Thirty age ...

Graves’ disease (GD) is an autoimmune disorder of the thyroid gland. Autoimmune diseases cluster within families and individuals, leading to the hypothesis of common autoimmunity genes being shared between diseases. This has been confirmed through studies demonstrating association of the HLA region, the CTLA-4 gene and the PTPN22 gene with many disorders including GD and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We and others have confirmed highly significant association of the R620W SN...

The HLA class II region, in particular DRB1/DQA1/DQB1, has been consistently associated with Graves’ disease (GD) for over thirty years. Only recently has work within our own group made progress in narrowing down the etiological variant(s) present within DRB1/DQA1/DQB1, by excluding DQB1, and by mapping association at DRB1 to nine amino acid positions present within the peptide binding domain, with position β74 being the most associated. Independ...