Endocrine Abstracts

Generously supported by IPSEN)-->It is known that acromegaly is associated with increased risk of benign and malignant tumours. Previous studies show the prevalence of nodular thyroid disease in 40–70% of patients with acromegaly, and a 5–7% prevalence of thyroid cancer in these patients, which is higher compared to the general population.Latvian Cancer Register data show an incidence of thyroid cance...

Agouti related protein (AGRP) as a endogenous antagonist of melanocortin 4 receptor plays an important role in regulation of food intake and energy balance being one of the most potent orexigenic factors. We have determined complete sequence of AGRP gene and upstream promoter region in 100 patients with severe obesity (BMI>35). Three previously described polymorphisms were identified: silent mutation G538A in second exon, non-synonymous mutation G772A (rs5030980) and C662T...

Metformin is a biguanide class agent widely used as a first-line treatment for type 2 diabetes, however the detailed mode of action and exact pharmacodynamics has not been clarified. Moreover there is no studies in humans displaying the effect of metformin on DNA methylation. We therefore performed a clinical study involving twelve healthy nondiabetic individuals who were subjected to the 1 week of metformin (2×850 mg/day) treatment. Peripheral blood for DNA isolation was...

Clinical response to metformin is highly variable in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients highlighting the need for identification of genetic components affecting the efficiency of metformin therapy. Aim of this study was to evaluate the role of systematically selected tagSNPs from genomic regions coding for six organic cation transporters implicated in transport of metformin with respect to the short-term efficiency. The study involved 102 drug naïve newly diagnosed T2D patien...

Association studies between genetic variants of adiponectin gene and susceptibility to type 2 diabetes (T2D) and increased body mass index (BMI) have provided contradictory results. We selected 10 SNPs (rs2241767, rs1501299, rs3777261, rs16861210, rs2241766, rs822396, rs182052, rs17300539, rs16861194, rs266729) in promoter and coding regions of adiponectin gene based on haploblock structure and previously reported association studies. Selected SNPs were screened in 170 patient...

Full gene coding sequence of somatostatin receptor 5 and 2000 bp of upstream region was estimated using direct sequencing in 28 patients with acromegaly and 97 controls. Total 19 polymorphisms were identified (SNP1-19) and possible haplotypes were reconstructed. From all polymorphisms found silent substitution SNP15 was significantly associated with acromegaly as compared with control group (P=0.005). Another substitution SNP17 involves the amino acid change from prolin...

Pituitary adenomas (PA) are benign tumors that develop in pituitary gland. Hormone secreting PA can cause overproduction of pituitary hormones leading to different systemic endocrine disorders (acromegaly, Cushing’s disease and others). Non-secreting PA can promote headaches (stretching of the dural sheath) and visual field defects (chiasma compression). We managed to obtain resected tumor samples from the patient having non-secreting PA, first tumor was resected in 2010,...

Introduction: Pituitary adenomas (PA) are tumours of the anterior pituitary. Despite the benign nature these neoplasms cause increased mortality and morbidity. Clinically relevant PAs affect around 0.1% of population during their lifetime. Currently, there is no human PA cell culture models. Tissue cultures derived from PA surgery materials depending on harvesting conditions can form free floating aggregates called pituispheres (PS) or adherent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC)....