Endocrine Abstracts

Fetal programming is triggered when a stimulus or insult occurs at a stage in fetal life, critical for target organ differentiation, growth and development. As a result, permanent changes in organ structure or function are induced that manifest as disease in adulthood. Impaired fetal growth or stress during fetal life and subsequent cardiometabolic disease in adult life is a well recognized example of fetal programming.Growing evidence suggests that pren...

Introduction: Insulin resistance is a main characteristic of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and contributes to the increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It is thought that in PCOS there is an alteration in the insulin signaling pathway. An important kinase in this pathway is the phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase (PI3K), the activity of which has been found to be decreased in PCOS. Based on this observation we investigated whether a single nucleotide polym...

Introduction: Increased oxidative stress is considered to be implicated in the pathophysiology of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). While the regulation of oxidative stress is multifactorial, many studies have been focused on the antioxidant role of paraoxonase (PON). The aim of this study was to investigate the possible association of the Q192R and the L55M polymorphisms of PON1 and the Ser311Cys polymorphism of PON2 with PCOS.Subjects and...

Introduction: Cushing’s syndrome is rare during pregnancy perhaps because hypersecretion of glucocorticoids supresses pituitary gonadotrophin secretion resulting in subfertility. When present, the syndrome is usually due to adrenal disease and less commonly to pituitary adenomas or ectopic ACTH production. In the contrary, Cushing’s syndrome outside pregnancy is usually due to pituitary adenomas whereas non ACTH-dependent Cushing’s is less frequent.<p class=...

Introduction: T regulatory lymphocytes (Tregs) are defined as CD4+CD25high T lymphocytes and are thought to regulate immune tolerance. The Foxp3 protein level in Tregs is proportional to CD25 protein surface expression and regulatory function, but inversely proportional to IL-7R (CD127) level, the receptor for the growth and survival of T cells. We investigated possible differences in Tregs between newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes (DM1) patients and contro...

Introduction: Klotho has an important role in insulin signaling and the development of ageing-like phenotypes in mice. Recently, the G-395A polymorphism in the promoter region of the human klotho gene has been reported to affect promoter function. It has been also shown to be an independent genetic risk factor for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to examine the possible role of this polymorphism in the metabolic syndrome....

Introduction: Sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) levels have been associated with the development of the metabolic syndrome. In particular, low SHBG levels have been proposed as an indicator of increased risk for metabolic syndrome in men. The (TAAAA)n repeat polymorphism SHBG gene is believed to affect SHBG levels. In vitro experiments have shown that the allele with 6 TAAAA repeats is associated with decreased transcriptional activity of SHBG gene. The aim of this study was...

Objective: The Fas/Fas ligand (FasL) apoptotic pathway is activated in patients with autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD). It is believed that Fas and FasL expression in intrathyroidal T lymphocytes and thyrocytes is regulated in a manner resulting in thyroid cell apoptosis in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) or lymphocyte apoptosis in Graves’ disease (GD). The hypothesis that Fas and FasL may be differentially expressed on peripheral lymphocytes in patients with HT and GD ...

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrinopathy with hyperandrogenemia to be its strongest genetically determined characteristic. Our aim was to investigate the potential synergy of two functional polymorphisms: the (TAAAA)n polymorphism of the sex hormone-binding globulin gene (SHBG) known to be associated with PCOS and influence serum SHBG levels (longer repeats were associated with lower SHBG levels) and the (CAG)n polymorphism of androgen receptor gene (...

Introduction-objective: Fas-mediated thyroid cell apoptosis is differentially regulated in autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) being up-regulated in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) and down-regulated in Graves’ disease (GD). The soluble form of Fas (sFas), lacking the transmembrane domain due to alternative splicing may inhibit apoptosis by binding to Fas ligand. In this preliminary study we examined whether sFas is also differentially expressed in patients with AITD....