Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Physicians in our hospital notified the laboratory staff of a number of patients at the outpatient clinic with increased free T4 (fT4) concentrations without (complete) suppression of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH). This phenomenon appeared to occur more frequently following implementation of a new automated fT4 immunoassay. The discordance between fT4 and TSH concentrations may be explained by analytical issues (not further explained here), incorrect referenc...

Objective: Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and liver fat content are associated with insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease and show clear sex differences. Our objective is to determine the effect of estradiol and testosterone on VAT and liver fat content in trans women (assigned male at birth, identify as female) and trans men (assigned female at birth, identify as male).Design: Open-label partly randomized intervention study in 8 trans women and 1...

Rationale: A history of optic chiasm compression in patients treated for sellar tumors is associated with alterations in sleep-wake rhythm. The optic chiasm contains axons of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) that mediate photoentrainment of the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Compression could disrupt this entrainment leading to desynchronization with the 24-hour light-dark cycle. The post-illumination pupil response (PIPR) after blue light exposure is a u...

Background: Insulinomas are the most prevalent functional neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas. Enucleation is often preferred to pancreatic resection because it’s minimally invasive nature. The aim of this study is to assess the post-operative surgical outcome in particular pancreatic fistula after resection.Methods: All patients with insulinomas were selected from a retrospective database of resected pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNET). Patie...

Introduction: Adolescents spend much time using blue-light emitting screen devices such as smartphones, tablets and computers. Blue light affects the central circadian clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) as well as melatonin secretion by the pineal gland. Screen use in adolescents strongly associates with reduced sleep quality and sleep duration. However, there is a lack of intervention studies that reduce blue light exposure due to screen use in adolescents.<p clas...

Background: Clinically non-functioning pituitary macroadenomas (NFMA) have been reported to express various somatostatin receptor (SSTR) subtypes, but results are inconsistent across different studies. This may be related to limited sensitivity and specificity of techniques used to date, i.e. immunohistochemistry in surgical specimens and 111In-DTPA-octreotide scintigraphy (Octreoscan) in vivo. The aim of this study was to assess SSTR expression in NFMA <em...

Background: Hypopituitarism after traumatic brain injury (TBI) is considered to be a prevalent condition, and may affect quality of life (QoL) and cognitive function. However, the prevalence of hypopituitarism differs considerably among reported studies due to differences in definitions, endocrine assessments of hypopituitarism, and confounding factors, like timing of evaluation and the severity of the trauma.Aim: To evaluate the prevalence of hypopituit...

Introduction: In patients with ACTH-dependent hypercortisolism, the corticotropin-releasing-hormone (CRH) test and the high dose dexamethasone suppression test (HDDST) can be used to differentiate between pituitary ACTH production (Cushing’s disease) and ectopic ACTH production. The rationale is that a pituitary adenoma will show some response to CRH and ACTH whereas an ectopic source is less responsive to ACTH and CRH. However, there is discussion about the clinical util...

Rationale: At present, there is no approved medical treatment for patients with clinically non-functioning pituitary adenoma. A number of open-label studies suggest that treatment with somatostatin analogues may prevent tumour progression in selected patients. In vivo assessment of somatostatin receptor status using 68Ga-DOTATATE PET could help to select patients responsive to treatment.Trial objective: To investigate the effect of the somatosta...

Background: Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors (PanNETs) are highly prevalent in Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia type 1 (MEN1) and one of the main causes of mortality. Conventional imaging is the mainstay of PanNET screening/surveillance in MEN1. This study aims to assess the diagnostic accuracy of conventional pancreatic imaging studies and to determine the added value of pancreatic fine needle aspirations (FNA) for the diagnosis of MEN1-related PanNETs.Meth...