Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: To audit the investigation and diagnosis of severe hyponatraemia (serum sodium ≤125 mmol/l) in elderly (age ≥65 years) medical in-patients admitted with this problem.Method: Standards for the investigation and diagnosis of hyponatraemia were designed after literature review and discussions with local endocrinologists. Elderly patients with hyponatraemia on admission were identified retrospectively over a 12 month period from the la...

A 48 year-old lady was referred to Endocrinology clinic in November 2016 with symptoms of tiredness and lethargy for two months. Routine bloods were unremarkable, apart from an incidental finding of raised Vitamin D:258 nmol/l(NR: 50–150). She had depression and was otherwise fit & well. She was on Citalopram and combined oral contraceptive pill (Microgynon). She denied any excessive sun exposure. She didn’t drink any milk, only drank orange juice. She took multi...

An 88 year-old male was referred to Endocrine Clinic with abnormal thyroid function test (TFT); free T4:fT4: 36.9pmol/L (NR:11-23) and a normal TSH:2.51mU/L (NR:0.35-5). Atrial Fibrilation was diagnosed recently and was on Apixiban and Bisoprolol. He had history of prostate cancer, hypertension, oesophagitis, cervical spondylosis, splenectomy and CKD3. He felt well apart from slight heartburn. He was a retired motor engineer. He had no family history of thyroid disease and nev...

Attenuated glucoprivic feeding responses are a feature of hypoglycaemic unawareness in insulin-treated diabetes. Glucose alters the activity of hypothalamic neurones involved in regulating appetite. Arcuate nucleus (ARC) Neuropeptide Y (NPY) releasing neurones stimulate feeding. The identification of glucose-sensitive NPY releasing hypothalamic neurones suggests a strong role for these neurones in mediating changes in appetite induced by alterations of glucose. To gain a bette...

Hypoglycaemia and hypoglycaemia unawareness severely limit the optimal management of diabetes mellitus and cause recurrent morbidity and even mortality in intensively controlled patients. Altered hypothalamic glucose sensing has been implicated in the development of defective counter regulatory responses to insulin induced hypoglycaemia and hypoglycaemic unawareness. This change in hypothalamic glucose sensing has been attributed, at least in part, to an increase in glucokinas...

Background: Our previous study revealed a high prevalence of abnormal mineralization markers namely low 25 hydroxyvitamin D (47.9%); high serum alkaline phosphatase (3.7%) and low calcium-phosphate product (9.8%) suggestive of biochemical signs of osteomalacia (OM, defined as any two of these risk factors). OM was more prevalent in girls (11.2%) compared to boys (5.0%). In this follow-up study, we aimed to evaluate if biochemical OM was associated with low intakes of calcium a...

Prokineticin 2 (PK2) is a neuropeptide expressed in hypothalamic nuclei involved in the regulation of energy homeostasis, and has been shown to acutely reduce food intake in rodents. PK2 binds to and activates two G protein-coupled receptors, the PK receptor 1 (PKR1) and the PK receptor 2 (PKR2). We aimed to determine the sites and receptors which mediate the anorectic effects of peripherally administered PK2 within the CNS. We investigated neuronal activity in the hypothalamu...