Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Primary hyperaldosteronism is still an underdiagnosed cause of hypertension. The challenge lies however, not only in diagnosing the primary hyperaldosteronism, but also in the distinction between aldosterone-producing adenoma (APA) and idiopathic adrenal hyperplasia (IHA). Establishing the correct diagnosis is after all essential, because surgery is only effective in patients with adrenal adenoma.Case report: We report about a 67-year-old p...

Growth hormone deficiency leads to reduced bone turnover, mainly due to alterations in PTH circadian rhythmicity as well as to a lack of sensitivity of the kidney and bone to the effects of PTH. These mechanisms may be responsible for bone turnover changes and development of osteoporosis. Patients with GHD show abnormalities of renal phosphate metabolism, which may also contribute to the pathogenesis of bone loss in these patients. GH treatment leads to restoration of renal tu...

Introduction: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNETs) can either occur in patients with a familial syndrome, like multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN-1), or being sporadic. In the last decade, endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) has become one of the first-line investigations for the characterisation of pNETs. The ultrasonographic features of a pNET might differ depending on the familial vs sporadic pathogenesis of the tumour. Therefore, the EUS findings might help and direct t...

Hypothalamic–pituitary insufficiency may have diverse causes. Infectious diseases of the central nervous system (CNS) may also affect the hypothalamus and/or the pituitary, although this has not been reported very often and not yet been studied systematically. It was the aim of this study to determine the incidence of hypothalamic–pituitary insufficiency in patients with previous infectious diseases of the CNS of different etiology.Patient seri...

Objective: The German KIMS Database is a national surveillance study for evaluation of efficacy and safety of growth hormone (GH) replacement therapy in adults with GH deficiency (GHD) in clinical practice.Patients: The analysis was performed using data of 1425 consecutively documented adult patients (777 men, 648 women) with GHD enrolled in KIMS Germany. The present report examined baseline and long term data (>48 months, range: 48–161 month) f...

Objective: A cytosine-adenine (CA)n microsatellite repeat polymorphism in the promoter region of the insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) gene has reported to be associated with IGF-1 serum levels, birth weight, body height, bone mineral density and risk for type 2 diabetes and myocardial infarction. Carriers and non-carriers of the most frequent allele (length 192 base pairs (bp)) showed significantly different total IGF-1 serum levels. This polymorphism may direct...