Endocrine Abstracts

Carbimazole is a commonly used antithyroid drug with a rare but potentially life-threatening side effect of agranulocytosis. We present a case of a 47-year-old lady who was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism four years previously and treated with carbimazole despite persistent neutropenia.At diagnosis the patient had clinical features of hyperthyroidism and thyroid function test (TFT) showed free T4 40.8 pmol/l (10.6–21.0), free T3...

Introduction: Weight gain following treatment of hyperthyroidism is well recognised. This may lead to compliance problems both in patients with/without eating disorders and subsequent failure of therapy. We describe two cases where this was successfully managed with supervised in-patient therapy.Case 1: A 30-year-old overweight lady was diagnosed with Grave’s disease following childbirth. Thyroid function test (TFT) at initiation of treatment showed...

Research in farm animals has long been a cornerstone of our understanding of reproduction and holds similar opportunities for understanding mechanisms by which stress affects fertility. Sheep and cow experimental models are appropriate to humans, especially as detailed longitudinal studies are possible because of size and access to ovaries.Failure to realise genetic potential is a better definition of stress than ‘an increase in corticoids’; ma...

The pituitary tumor-transforming gene-binding factor (PBF) is a relatively uncharacterised proto-oncogene, which is overexpressed in thyroid tumours. PBF elicits tumor growth in nude mice, whilst thyroid targeted transgenic overexpression in the PBF-Tg mouse induces hyperplasia and macrofollicular lesions, accompanied by induction of the E2 ubiquitin ligase Rad6. Our previous unpublished data showed that PBF binds to p53, and reduces stimulation of downstream target genes by c...