Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a spectrum of progressive liver diseases driven in part by macrophages, occurring in the absence of excessive alcohol consumption that ranges from simple steatosis to non-alcoholic steato-hepatitis (NASH), ultimately progressing to fibrosis/cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. NAFLD is associated with insulin resistance and confers an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Pre-menopausal women are protected against...

Background: Insulin resistance and ageing are risk factors for the development of type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis. Insulin signalling in macrophages affects their inflammatory responses and foam cell formation capacity, yet the mechanisms linking these remain unclear. Recent evidence has emerged linking macrophage lipid metabolism and inflammatory response such as an interferon-cholesterol pathway flux axis. Insulin has been shown to directly regulate chol...

Authors 1-4 contributed equally to this work.Background: Insulin resistance is the central defining feature of type 2 diabetes and increases with age. People with type 2 diabetes are at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), Alzheimer’s disease and arthritis. Macrophages are phagocytotic leukocytes which play a central role in the development of type 2 diabetes and the chronic inflammatory di...

Type 2 diabetes is preceded by insulin resistance, followed by increased endothelial cell production of superoxide and reduction in bioavailability of the vasoprotective signalling molecule, nitric oxide (NO). We demonstrated in preclinical models that type 2 diabetes also causes resistance to insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) mediated glucose lowering and endothelial NO release. This study aimed to examine the effect of the endothelial cell-specific combination of insulin ...