Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: LH resistance is very rare and there are only a few case reports in the literature. We describe a patient who presented to us with secondary amenorrhea and very high isolated LH levels who subsequently had a successful pregnancy with IVF.Case report: A 16 year old girl was referred to us to investigate the cause of her oligomenhorrea. She had attained menarche at the age of 13 and had only 5 periods in 3 years. She had no symptoms/signs of ...

There is no consensus on the role of insulin secreted from pancreatic β-cells in regulating its own secretion, nether in rodent islets nor in human islets. We have now investigated whether there is an autocrine signalling role for insulin in human islets by determining insulin receptor expression and assessing the effects of insulin receptor activation using a non-peptidyl insulin-mimetic termed L-783,281. All experiments used hand-picked human islets of Langerhans. Human...

Background: Low testosterone levels are a common finding in men with type 2 diabetes and are also associated with low HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) levels which are an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The androgen receptor CAG repeat polymorphism (AR CAG) and GGN repeat polymorphism (AR GGN) affect receptor function such that shorter AR CAG and AR GGN=23 are associated with greater transcriptional activity in vitro.Methods and results...

The insulin tolerance test (ITT) is used to determine the integrity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and hypothalamic-somatotroph (GH) axes in patients suspected of ACTH and GH deficiency. In adults a cortisol response <500nmol/L is considered pathological and a GH peak <9mU/L is consistent with severe GH deficiency. Exercise is an alternative stimulus to GH release which may be used to diagnose GH deficiency during childhood but is rarely used during adult li...

Pharmacokinetics and tolerability of a new a bioadhesive buccal testosterone tablet in testosterone deficient men.RJM Ross, A Jabbar, H Jones, B Roberts, K Dunkley, A Long, H Levine, DR CullenObjectives: A phase I single centre, open label study of the pharmacokinetics and tolerability of a buccal testosterone tablet (COL1621). Design: The study was approved by The South Sheffield Ethics Committee. Twelve testosterone deficient males were treated with the buccal tablet...

Plasma homocysteine is now regarded as a graded risk factor for vascular disease comparable to smoking, high cholesterol and raised blood pressure. In diabetes homocysteine values have correlated with microalbuminuria and are thought to contribute to vascular damage. Folic acid is an essential co-factor for homocysteine metabolism and folic acid supplementation has been shown to reduce plasma homocysteine by about 30%.In this study patients with Type II ...

Previous studies have demonstrated that POMC peptides are present in islets of Langerhans and suggested that ACTH-related peptides may act as paracrine modulators of insulin secretion. In order to shed light on the cellular mechanisms involved in these responses, we have carried out experiments using the MIN6 mouse insulinoma cell-line and synthetic ACTH 1-24. Following the detection of mouse ACTH receptor (MC-2) receptor mRNA by PCR amplification of MIN6 cDNA, perifusion expe...

Background: The Controlled Antenatal Thyroid Screening II (CATS) study, a large randomised trial of thyroxine supplementation for suboptimal gestational thyroid function (SGTF), reported a higher prevalence of elevated attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) scores in 9 year-old children exposed to higher thyroid hormone (TH) in utero. Here we investigated if this was accompanied by altered neurodevelopment.Methods: 85 children aged 11-1...

Objective: To evaluate whether patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) have been successfully transitioned to adult endocrine care.Methods: All patients with CAH who had attended the paediatric adrenal clinic at RMCH and were currently between 16 and 30 years of age were identified. Current status of adult endocrine care was recorded.Results: Sixty-eight patients were identified. There was inadequate information on 16 pa...