Endocrine Abstracts

Technical advances frequently lead to surprises. Studies of gene expression have used reporter genes since the 1980s to assess how mammalian gene promoters are activated or repressed. Two of the most widely used reporters are firefly luciferase and green fluorescent protein, and both have the advantage that their expression can be seen, and their bioluminescence or fluorescence readily measured. In studying how hormone genes were controlled in the pituitary, we used quantitati...

Endocrine systems are dynamically changing and complex systems. Quantitative measurements of hormones over time became possible with the development of sensitive immunoassays, and it rapidly became clear that hormone release is often pulsatile. The timing of ultradian hormone pulses and circadian variation turns out to be a central characteristic of many systems, and this has required increasing use of mathematical analysis.Regulation of gene expression ...

We report a case of Carney complex who demonstrated most of the disease-defining features and an unusual manifestation of choroidal malignant melanoma not previously reported in the literature.A 16-year-old female patient initially presented to the endocrinologists in 1991 with secondary amenorrhea and raised prolactin levels, diagnosed to have a pituitary microprolactinoma. Past history included episodes of vague syncope and palpitations treated as comp...

Some patients with Cushing’s have only periodic hypercortisolism, known as cyclical Cushing’s, becoming eucortisolaemic or even transiently subnormal between periods of hypercortisolaemia. We report two cases and discuss the management.A 23-year-old lady presented in March 2007 with Cushingoid features. Initial urinary free cortisol was raised at 594 nmol/l. A midnight cortisol of 568 nmol/l and post-48 h low dose dexamethasone cortisol of 351 ...

18 year old female referred with 2 years history of hirsutism and secondary amenorrhoea. She was born at 37 weeks and was found to have neonatal hypothermia, hypoglycaemia and crossed hemihypertrophy, but no macroglossia. Due to the increased risk of Wilm’s tumour she had regular ultrasound scans up to the age of 11 years. She attained menarche at the age of 13 but had only two periods within 18 months. By the age of 15 she developed hirsutism and acne. Biochemistry revea...

A 22-year-old pregnant lady presented to the Emergency Department (ED) at 36 weeks of gestation with sudden onset of severe headache and blurring of vision. On examination, she was alert, conscious (GCS: 15/15) and had bitemporal hemianopia, confirmed on formal visual field assessment. MRI brain scan (limited views due to pregnancy) showed a pituitary mass extending into the suprasellar region and reaching the optic chiasm. Serum prolactin (PRL) was elevated at 3876 μ/l (...

Background: Many young people have inadequate follow up because they lose contact with adult care following transfer from paediatrics. There is a need to adapt communication interventions to help young people to determine and enact their preferred involvement in consultations with health professionals.Objective: To develop interventions to support communication with young people in endocrine care and to assess the feasibility of implementation in routine...

Circulating levels of prolactin are subject to acute and long-term regulation by many factors including oestrogen and dopamine. We have studied the regulation of prolactin promoter activity in living pituitary cells using transgenic Fischer rats in which reporter gene expression is regulated by the human prolactin gene locus (hPRL-d2EGFP). We have previously identified pulsatile prolactin transcription patterns in living lactotroph cells in fetal tissue, that became stabilised...

Alternative promoters control many genes including prolactin (PRL), which in man is expressed at extra-pituitary sites controlled by an alternative promoter located 5.8 Kbp upstream of the pituitary transcription start site. Previous studies using short promoter fragments may be misleading, as the human hPRL genomic locus has many conserved far-upstream regions. To study the function of the alternative promoter, we engineered a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) expressing ...

Gene expression in living cells is dynamic and unstable, and fluctuations in transcription may be subject to stochastic regulation of processes including transcription factor and polymerase recruitment, and chromatin remodelling. One gene that has been shown to display dynamically variable transcription and marked heterogeneity between cells is prolactin (PRL). Time-lapse imaging of PRL-reporter gene expression in single rat pituitary GH3 cells revealed distinct long-term tran...