Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Today, GLP-1 receptor agonists have great clinical importance in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity. Furthermore, GLP-1 seems to play a significant role in sodium and water homeostasis. Recent findings investigating long-term effects of treatment with GLP-1 receptor agonists showed a reduction of fluid intake irrespective of food consumption. To our knowledge, data regarding physiological mechanisms that could explain these observations are inconclusive. ...

Background/Introduction: Today, GLP-1 receptor agonists have great clinical importance in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity. Beside their known mechanisms to lower blood sugar and enhance satiety signals, GLP-1 also seems to play a significant role in sodium and water balance. This can be supported by the finding of GLP-1 receptor expression in various locations of the kidney, the enteric system and key brain structures. Recent findings investigating long-term effec...

Background: The spectrum of polyuria-polydipsia syndrome (PPS) includes diabetes insipidus (central or nephrogenic) and primary polydipsia. In clinical practice the differential diagnosis particularly of central diabetes insipidus (cDI) and primary polydipsia (PP) is often difficult. The current gold standard – the water deprivation test (WDT) with or without vasopressin (AVP) measurements – lacks reliable diagnostic accuracy. Arginine infusion is known to stimulate ...

Background: Differential diagnosis of hyponatremia is challenging, particularly for thiazide associated hyponatremia (TAH), as patients might have either volume depletion in need for fluid substitution or syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis (SIAD)-like presentation requiring fluid restriction. Urine indices are of little utility, because they are influenced by thiazide therapy. Apparent strong ion difference (aSID) describes the relation between sodium, potassium and chlori...

Context: Hyponatremia due to the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH) is a very common condition in hospitalized patients. It is crucial to establish the cause of SIADH especially in order to exclude or detect an underlying malignancy. As SIADH can be caused by paraneoplastically produced arginine vasopressin (AVP), we hypothesized that its stable surrogate marker copeptin may be used as a diagnostic tool.Methods: We analyzed ...

Introduction: The Syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis (SIADH) is the predominant cause of hyponatremia and its therapy options are unsatisfying. SGLT2-inhibitors have become a valuable treatment option for type 2 diabetes by increasing glucose excretion in the urine with concomitant osmotic diuresis. We therefore hypothesized that SGLT2-inhibitors could be a novel treatment option for SIADH.Material and methods: We included 14 healthy volunteers in th...

Background: Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) is a hormone induced in the liver by metabolic stressors including starvation, sugars, and ethanol. Alcohol consumption increases endogenous FGF21 levels in humans while administration of FGF21 has been shown to reduce alcohol consumption in non-human primates. The effect of acute moderate alcohol consumption and long-term alcohol cessation on FGF21 levels in humans is controversial. We hypothesize that even moderate alcohol cons...

Introduction: Smoking harms women more than men and women seem to be less successful in quitting. Greater concerns about post-cessational weight in women and gender differences in craving and reward processing have been postulated as possible explanations. Our group recently showed that the GLP-1 analogue dulaglutide reduces post-cessational weight gain. We hypothesize that women compared to men might profit more from the weight-lowering effects of dulaglutide in terms of abst...

Introduction: Alcohol use disorder AUD causes high socio-economic costs and has a detrimental impact on health globally, being considered a key risk factor for non-communicable diseases. In Switzerland, four substances are currently approved for treatment of AUD, with varying effects. Taking into consideration the complex nature of the disease and the heterogeneity of affect patients, it becomes evident that there is need for new treatment targets. A body of preclinical studie...

Introduction: The differential diagnosis between arginine vasopressin deficiency (AVP-D), formally known as central diabetes insipidus, and primary polydipsia (PP) is challenging. In clinical routine, psychopathologic findings are often used as a hallmark for diagnosing PP; thus, it is often referred to as psychogenic polydipsia. Yet, psychopathologic characteristics are barely assessed in patients with AVP-D, and to date, no data exist comparing AVP-D and PP with regard to th...