Endocrine Abstracts

Peptide hormones stimulate responses in target tissues by triggering enzyme activation inside cells and thus the generation of ‘second messenger’ molecules. Two of the most important second messengers in endocrinology are cAMP, whose production is stimulated by activation of Gαs G proteins in response to hormones such as TSH and ACTH, and phosphatidylinositol-3,4,5-trisphosphate (PIP3), generated by phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) in r...

Robert Semple is a Reader in Endocrinology and Metabolism and Honorary Consultant Endocrinologist at the University of Cambridge, UK. He read Biochemistry and then Medicine at the University of Cambridge before internal medical posts in London. He returned to Cambridge for specialist training in Diabetes and Endocrinology, interrupted by doctoral studies with Prof. Sir Stephen O’Rahilly, focussing on transcriptio...

Insulin resistance is usually taken to mean a state in which insulin exerts a diminished blood glucose lowering effect. Insulin resistance is not a disease in itself, but is closely associated with pandemic diseases or tissue pathologies including type 2 diabetes, fatty liver, metabolic dyslipidemia, polycystic ovary syndrome and some cancers. It is also closely associated in the general population with obesity, and there is a widely prevalent view that obesity leads to insuli...

The European Journal of Endocrinology Prize is awarded to a candidate who has contributed significantly to the advancement of the knowledge in the field of endocrinology through publication. Further information on the prize can be found at http://www.ese-hormones.org/prizes/eje.aspx. This year’s recipient is Dr Robert Semple. The prize will be presented as part of the ECE 2015 opening ceremony where Dr Sem...

After secretion from the pancreatic β cells, insulin exerts its pleiotropic effects by binding to its widely expressed cell surface receptor and triggering a cascade of intracellular signalling events, suppressing hepatic glucose production and inducing glucose uptake into fat and muscle among many other effects. Insulin is also cleared rapidly from the circulation, with a half-life of around 5 min, a process which is partly mediated by insulin receptor binding. This rapi...

Insulin resistance (IR) is an important biochemical phenomenon because it is closely linked to major and highly prevalent diseases including diabetes mellitus, atherogenic dyslipidaemia, the fatty liver disease dysfunction, and ovulatory dysfunction. Yet major barriers to understanding the mechanisms linking IR to these clinical diseases have included 1. The difficulty in discerning cause and effect relationships in associated phenomena in a complex multisystem disorder and 2....

Type 2 diabetes is a major and growing global healthcare challenge, and its earliest antecedent physiological abnormality is insulin resistance. Although conventionally defined in terms of insulin’s effect on blood glucose, prevalent forms of insulin resistance are complex biochemical syndromes characterized by hyperinsulinaemia, dyslipidaemia and low adiponectin. The precise nature of the insulin signalling defect(s), and the extent to which components of this syndrome r...

Driven by the rising global tide of obesity, insulin resistance is already at pandemic levels, and is intimately associated with major pathologies including type 2 diabetes, ovulatory dysfunction and hyperandrogenism, the spectrum of fatty liver disease, and disorders of growth including cancer. Yet despite intensive study of prevalent forms of the condition, major questions remain both about the nature of the genetic predisposition to insulin resistance, and the mechanisms li...

A 65 year-old male was evaluated at another hospital for frequent episodes of fainting preceded by sweating, palpitations fatigue and hunger over several years. There was no personal or family history of diabetes mellitus. Hypoglycaemia was confirmed on a supervised fast and, guided by some equivocal uptake on a dotatate scan, he underwent a distal pancreatectomy, but the symptoms persisted. He was referred to our centre. He reported relentless weight gain and a need to eat po...

Background: Acid-labile subunit (ALS) protein plays a vital role in maintaining the serum IGF by prolonging the half-life of IGF/IGFBP binary complex. ALS deficiency due to IGFALS gene mutation results in primary IGF1 deficiency and associated with growth impairment, insulin resistance and occasionally delayed puberty.Case report: A 9-year-old boy was referred for short stature (height −1.8 SDS and weight −1.8 SDS). He is the sixth of non-con...