Endocrine Abstracts

A 35-year-old patient was referred to a tertiary referral unit for further investigation of severe watery diarrhea. Infectious agents had already been excluded. Biochemistry revealed a strikingly raised serum calcium concentration of 4.09 mmol/l (NR 2.1–2.65 mmol/l), chromogranin A was grossly elevated at 293 U/l (NR 2–18 U/l) and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) was also raised at 130 pg/ml (NR 10–60 pg/ml). Computed tomography (CT) of the abdomen demonstrat...

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (PNETs) have a lower mutational burden than other tumours, indicating that other mechanisms contribute to tumourigenesis. One such reported mechanism is DNA methylome dysregulation, however, inconsistencies have been observed between gene methylation and protein expression, potentially stemming from the use of standard methylation assessment methods which do not distinguish methylation (5’methylcytosine (5’mC), repressive mark) from ...

Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs), occurring at multiple sites including the pancreas, lung and pituitary, are increasing in incidence and usually present at an advanced metastatic stage, and current medical treatments have limited efficacy. Epigenetic modifiers are promising new drugs, as mutations in the multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN1) gene, encoding the histone methyltransferase MLL1 interacting protein, menin, are known to cause both familial and sporadic N...