Endocrine Abstracts

While it is well known that hyperthyroidism leads to weight loss, and hypothyroidism is associated with weight gain, there has been an increasing focus on the relationship between thyroid function and body weight in recent years. A moderate elevation of TSH concentrations, which is associated with triiodothyronine (T3) values in or slightly above the upper normal range, is frequently found in obese humans. These thyroid hormone alterations in obesity seem rather a c...

Objective: Relationships of blood circulating melanocortins to childhood obesity are not well established. We evaluated serum α-melanocyte stimulating hormone (α-MSH) in lean children and different study groups of childhood obesity.Methods: We examined serum α-MSH in 52 otherwise healthy children with childhood obesity (Ob, mean age 11 years, 32 girls / 20 boys), 27 normal-weight children of same age, 7 additional obese patients with reduc...