Endocrine Abstracts

A 62-year-old Asian British female presented with increasing tiredness. She had multiple co-morbidities and was prescribed steroid inhalers for suspected asthma. Her type 2 diabetes mellitus, previously well controlled on metformin, had worsened over a short period of time (48 to 85 mmol/mol). On examination, she was obese (weight 82 kg, BMI 43 kg/m2), hypertensive (155/78 mmHg); rest of the examination was unremarkable. The blood test revealed undetectable cortisol...

In peripheral target tissues, levels of active glucocorticoid hormones are controlled by 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1) which catalyses the reduction of cortisone to cortisol within the endoplasmic reticulum. For functional 11-ketoreductase activity, 11β-HSD1 requires the NADPH-generating enzyme hexose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (H6PDH). Loss of 11-ketoreductase activity results in increased cortisol clearance and activation of the HPA axis wi...

Background: Vitamin B12 (B12) insufficiency is common in pregnancy and independently predicts insulin resistance (IR) in the offspring. B12 is an important key nutrient for epigenetic programming through regulating DNA methylation. Such B12 DNA methylation may influence leptin, a strong candidate for methylation, which could impact both insulin resistance (IR) and associated neonatal metabolic risk. Therefore, we hypothesize that leptin can be programmed by maternal B12 which ...

Studies in India (vegetarian population) show that vitamin B12 insufficiency is common in pregnancy and independently predict adiposity and insulin resistance in the offspring. Epigenetic programming is postulated as, along with folic acid, B12 is crucial for DNA methylation. Therefore, we investigated whether maternal B12 levels in a non-vegetarian UK population predict metabolic risk of the offspring.Paired maternal venous and cord blood samples (n...

Background: Assays for parathyroid hormone (PTH) are not standardized and therefore method-specific reference intervals are necessary for interpretation of results. PTH increases with age in adults but age-specific reference intervals for the Abbott intact PTH (iPTH) assay are not available. It is challenging and resource intensive to derive age-specific reference intervals by direct method because, depending on number of age partitions, samples from a large n...