Endocrine Abstracts

With increasing numbers of survivors from cancer at a young age the issue of fertility preservation has assumed greater importance. Female fertility preservation provides significantly different challenges to that for the male. Embryo freezing is now an accepted and well-established procedure in many centres, but is not available for children who do not have a partner. Cryopreservation using vitrification of mature oocytes has become increasingly successful, but requires the p...

Introduction: Effects on fertility have been seen as important late effects of treatment for childhood cancer.Aim: To evaluate the impact of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment for childhood medulloblastoma on gonadal function.Methods: Retrospective cohort study of all children treated for medulloblastoma (diagnosed from 2–18 years) in a single institution in the UK between 1983–2011 and a minimum relapse-free surviva...

Context: In rodents, in-utero exposure to the exogenous oestrogen diethylstilboestrol (DES) results in reproductive abnormalities in male offspring. It has been proposed that similar anti-androgenic effects also occur in the human fetal testis following oestrogen exposure.Objective: Determine effects of DES exposure on testosterone production by normally growing human fetal testis xenografts.Design: Human fetal testes (15&...

Background: Endocrine disruption in the human fetal testis by environmental agents has been proposed as a possible cause of testicular dysgenesis syndrome (TDS) comprising male reproductive disorders such as testicular germ cell tumours (TGCT), cryptorchidism, hypospadias and low sperm counts. Exposure of fetal rats to the widely used plasticizer di(n-butyl) phthalate (DBP) results in a TDS-like syndrome due to a reduction in testosterone production. Whether such effects also ...