Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Infrared thermography (IRT) can assess human brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity non-invasively. However, it remains unclear if skin temperature is altered in obesity. We compared skin temperatures of lean and obese individuals following cold exposure and studied its relationship with energy expenditure (EE).Methods: 10 lean (age 28.3±2.1y, BMI 21.5±0.4kg/m2) and 10 obese (age 28.2±2.1y, BMI 36.2±1.3kg/m2</...

Introduction: Brown adipose tissue (BAT) increases energy expenditure and is a potential therapeutic target for obesity and associated cardiometabolic disease. It is unclear whether human BAT activity is reduced in obesity, as BAT 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake is reduced but BAT metabolic activity measured using11C-acetate PET is preserved. BAT thermogenesis relies on the presence of uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1), which uncouples oxidative phosphorylation f...

Background: Corticosteroid Binding Globulin (CBG) binds >85% of plasma cortisol and controls the circulating free cortisol pool. Proteolytic cleavage by neutrophil elastase is proposed to reduce CBG binding affinity and increase free cortisol availability to inflamed tissues. The CORtisol NETwork (CORNET) consortium found that genetic variation at a locus spanning SERPINA1 (encoding alpha-1 antitrypsin, A1AT, the endogenous inhibitor of neutrophil elastase) and SE...

Introduction: Corticosteroid Binding Globulin (CBG) binds >85% of plasma cortisol and modulates free cortisol levels. Observations in vitro show that CBG is cleaved by neutrophil elastase (NE), a mechanism proposed to reduce CBG binding affinity and increase free cortisol availability to inflamed tissues. However, detection of cleaved CBG in vivo in human plasma is controversial, and any influence of NE on CBG cleavage has not been tested in vivo...

Background: Treatment of CAH in childhood focuses on growth and development; however the impact of final height (FH) on adult health is not known. We examined the relationship between FH, adiposity, cardiometabolic risk and quality of life (QoL) in a cohort of adult patients.Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of 199 adults with CAH. FH, waist circumference (WC) and QoL were expressed as z-scores adjusted for mid-parental target height (FHTH<...

Background: Quality of life (QoL) has been variously reported as normal or impaired in congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) adults. We found impaired QoL in UK CAH adults and now report the relationship between QoL, glucocorticoid treatment and health outcomes in these patients.Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of 151 CAH adults with 21-hydroxylase deficiency aged 18–69 years in whom QoL (SF-36), glucocorticoid regimen, anthropometric, and metabolic...

Background: Bone marrow adipose tissue (BMAT) comprises >10% of total adipose mass in healthy humans and further increases in diverse clinical conditions, including obesity/diabetes, osteoporosis and following caloric restriction (CR). However, why BMAT increases during CR remains unknown. One possibility is that this is mediated by glucocorticoid (GC) excess. GC action on target tissues depends on circulating and intracellular concentrations of t...

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a therapeutic target for obesity and associated metabolic diseases, due to its role in non-shivering thermogenesis. BAT activation is mediated through sympathetic stimulation, but parasympathetic regulation of human BAT has not been demonstrated previously. We undertook RNA sequencing of human white and brown primary adipocytes to identify novel pathways regulating BAT. CHRM2 (encoding the muscarinic acetylcholine receptor 2) was the most differen...