Endocrine Abstracts

Aims: Recent evidence suggests that Growth Hormone Deficiency (GHD) may be associated with cognitive impairment in adults. These findings are supported by neurobiological studies documenting the presence of GH receptors in many regions of the brain, including the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. However to date no comprehensive investigation of the cognitive sequelae of growth hormone deficiency in children has been undertaken. We aimed to determine the effect of GHD on ...

Quality of Life (QoL) is a very important issue in the management of a chronic disease like acromegaly. Recently the AcroQol questionnaire was developed to evaluate the QoL in different acromegalic populations. We decided to compare the scores of AcroQol and 2 other different questionnaires: one related to general well-being (SF-36) and the other to evaluate depression (BDI). We preformed a cross-sectional evaluation of a sample of 60 Portuguese acromegalics, 20 men and 40 wom...

Introduction: There is a large body of evidence to suggest that the GH axis plays an important role in brain myelination. However, results from studies in humans with an abnormal GH axis have varied and therefore there remains no consensus as to whether the GH/IGF1 axis plays a significant role in neural development. No previous studies have used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) a sensitive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique for studying brain white matter tracts, to add...