Endocrine Abstracts

Oestrogens act via oestrogen receptors (ER) that are expressed in a wide range of tissues including the vasculature, bone and gonads. Two ER genes known as ERalpha and ERbeta have been identified. In the human splice variants of ERbeta have been identified. ERs form both homodimers and heterodimers upon ligand binding. The aim of the present experiments was to study the functional activity of ERbeta1 (wild type) and ERbeta variant (ERbeta2) in single and double transfection as...

Background: Military personnel on operational deployment commonly lose weight despite the adequate supply of rations. Moderate weight loss (~5% body mass) occurred during the initial phase of a 6-month deployment to Afghanistan without affecting physical fitness. Reasons for this weight loss are presently unknown. We sought to establish whether changes in appetite regulatory hormones contribute to the observed weight loss.Methods: Body mass and body comp...

We conducted a prospective study of 5784 subjects aged 65 or over, screened and identified in primary care. The cohort comprised 2934 women, 2850 men, mean age 73.5 years (range 63.5-98.6). All had TSH measured in a sensitive assay (normal range 0.4-5.5 mU/l), as well as free T4 (normal range 9-20 pmol/l), and resting 12-lead ECG. Atrial fibrillation (AF) was present in 4.81% of the cohort. The prevalence of AF showed significant variation with serum TSH concentrations, being ...

Thyroid dysfunction is common, particularly in the elderly, and has an important impact on morbidity and mortality, especially in this age group.Aim: We have investigated associations between thyroid function, presence of atrial fibrillation and cognitive function in a large general practice-based study conducted from December 2002-November 2004. Subjects with a previous history of thyroid disease or currently taking thyroxine or anti-thyroid drugs were ...