Endocrine Abstracts

Macroprolactin, a circulating complex of monomeric prolactin together with an autoantibody, is commonly encountered in the course of endocrine investigations. It is generally agreed macroprolactin exhibits reduced bioactivity in vivo since individuals who harbour the complex do not demonstrate the classic clinical signs or symptoms characteristic of true hyperprolactinaemia. The aim of this study was to compare the relative potency of purified preparations of macroprolactin to...

Where screening for macroprolactin takes place, laboratories routinely rely on treatment of sera with polyethylene glycol (PEG) to distinguish macroprolactinaemia from true hyperprolactinaemia. However, PEG is incompatible with a number of common immunoassay platforms. The aim of this study was to assess the specificity and clinical utility of ultrafiltration as an alternative procedure for removal of bio-inactive prolactin IgG complexes such as macroprolactin from serum prior...

Ganglioneuroblastoma is a rare neoplasm of adults, containing both primitive neuroblastomatous and mature ganglioneuromatous elements of sympathetic cell origin. We describe an adult patient with a ganglioneuroblastoma exclusively secreting dopamine.A 41 year old lady represented 6 days post laparoscopic excision of endometriosis with a 2 day history of right sided abdominal pain. Only on direct questioning did she admit to a vague 2 month history of occ...

Objective: Motilin is a proximal small intestinal hormone with roles in gastrointestinal motility, gallbladder emptying and hunger initiation. The molecular mechanisms underlying motilin release in response to fats, bile and duodenal acidification are poorly understood, in part due a lack of suitable cellular and rodent models. We therefore generated a novel human intestinal organoid model with fluorescently labelled motilin-expressing M-cells, which we used to establish the k...

PTTG is a multifunctional proto-oncogene, overexpressed in thyroid, pituitary and other endocrine cancers. PTTG is also implicated in the pathogenesis of head and neck cancer, where high PTTG expression independently correlates with advanced tumour stage and reduced disease-free survival. Recently, abrogation of residue threonine-60 (T60) has been associated with altered PTTG half-life, chromosomal instability and cell invasion. We therefore generated a phospho-specific antibo...

Hypospadias is among the most common congenital malformations with a mean prevalence of 19.9 per 10,000 live births in Europe. The cause of many cases of hypospadias remains unclear but likely results from a combination of genetic susceptibility and environmental factors. Although rodent studies have provided great insights into external genitalia morphogenesis, extrapolations to the human genitals is challenging given significant anatomic and morphogenetic differences. With t...