Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Malnutrition has been associated with increased adverse clinical outcomes and affects a considerable proportion of hospitalized medical patients. While recent evidence from clinical trials revealed a survival benefit from nutritional support, data from a large real-world population is still missing.Methods: In this population-based cohort study, using a Swiss administrative claims database from January 2012 to December 2017, we created a medi...

Background: Epidemiologocal data suggest an continuous increase in thyroid carcinoma diagnosis. Therefore, thyroidectomy rates are projected to increase world-wide in exponential scale. In Switzerland, the institutional number of thyroidectomies varies, however there is no data yet on the association between institutional thyroidectomy volume and clinical outcome.Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of adult inpatients in Swiss hospitals using a nation-wide...

Background: Incidence of thyroidectomies and awareness to postoperative quality measures have both increased in the last decade. Gender-specific indications and variations in clinical outcomes of patients undergoing thyroidectomy in Switzerland are of interest.Methods: We cross-sectionally compared administrative nationwide patient-level data for length of hospital stay (LOS), intensive care unit (ICU) admission, 30-day readmissions rates, and other qual...

Background: Neither dosage nor duration of systemic glucocorticoid therapy are reliable indicators of subsequent adrenal insufficiency. The dexamethasone suppression test is a measure of feedback sensitivity of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis to cortisol. We hypothesized that this test predicts the later development of an adrenal insufficiency after a 14 days’ course of oral prednisone in healthy volunteers.Methods: We analyzed dat...

Background: Patients with adrenal insufficiency suffer from increased morbidity and mortality. Quantitative evidence on the health-care burden of either primary (PAI) or secondary adrenal insufficiency (SAI) among hospitalized medical patients is scarce.Methods: In this observational cohort study, we analysed nationwide acute care hospitalizations from patients with PAI or SAI, respectively, between 2011 and 2015 using prospective administrative data. Pa...

Background: Hyponatremia is the most prevalent electrolyte disorder in hospitalized adult medical patients and is associated with a significant healthcare resource burden. However, evidence remains scarce whether hyponatremia is a marker of disease severity or whether it has an independent effect on clinical outcomes.Methods: In this nationwide cohort study, we analyzed medical inpatients with hyponatremia diagnosed between January 2009 through December ...

Background: Low testosterone levels in men appear to be an independent cardiovascular risk factor closely associated with the metabolic syndrome. Reciprocally, the metabolic syndrome leads to a decrease in testosterone levels, suggesting a bidirectional relationship. It has been hypothesized that increased inflammation is causative for the development of obesity-associated hypogonadism. However, clinical evidence supporting this hypothesis is lacking. The aim of the present st...

Background: Stroke is the second commonest reason of mortality worldwide and a major cause of long term disability. Early prediction of outcome is important for allocation of therapeutic strategies. Endocrine alterations of the hypothalamus–pituitary–axis (HPA) are one of the first stress-induced alterations after cerebral ischemia. We evaluated the prognostic value of cortisol for outcome in acute ischemic cerebrovascular events.Method: In an ...

Background: Fibroblast growth factor-21 (FGF21), which has recently been identified as a central regulator of metabolism, is known to be increased in conditions of obesity, insulin resistance, and fatty liver. Likewise, there is evidence that FGF21 increases with systemic inflammation. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether chronic low-grade inflammation might be the underlying mechanism and whether an anti-inflammatory treatment decreases FGF21 levels in metabolic diso...

Background: Interleukin (IL)-1 antagonism decreases systolic blood pressure in obese individuals. However, the underlying mechanism is unknown. Based on experimental data in animals we hypothesised a blood-pressure lowering effect of IL-1-antagonism via modulation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS).Methods: In this post-hoc explorative study, we examined short- (2 days) and long-term effects (4 weeks) of IL-1 antagonism (anakinra/Kineret<...