Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Pituitary gigantism is a rare but clinically significant paediatric condition. Transphenoidal surgery is the treatment of choice, however medical treatment is often considered as adjuvant therapy.Case report: A 10.6 year old boy presented with tall stature. With hindsight he was noticeably tall from age 5 years. At 10 years his height velocity was 12 cm/year, prompting referral and further investigation. His height was 178.7 cm (+5.79 sds a...

Introduction: Hypophysitis is an inflammatory disease of the pituitary gland that may mimic pituitary tumors clinically and radiologically. Primary hypophysitis has traditionnaly been classified as lymphocytic (LH), granulomatous (GH), and xanthomatous (XH).Case description: We report on a case of a xanthomatous hypophysitis initially diagnosed as pituitary adenoma. A 23-year-old men suffered from typical cluster type headache. Two years after the first ...

Background: Pituitary apoplexy has been reported in around 2% of surgically treated adenomas. Around 45% of all pituitary tumours presenting with apoplexy are non-functioning ones (NFAs). Currently, no data exist on recurrence rates in patients with NFAs who have had classical apoplexy.Aim: We therefore, put together our data aiming to provide the first reliable series on recurrence rates in patients with NFA and classical pituitary apoplexy.<p class...

Introduction: Iodine is essential for thyroid funciton and severe deficiency adversely affects the developing brain. A raised and sufficient intake is particularly important during the pregnancy. Iodine sources include sea foods and sea salt, and it is available as a dietary supplement. The former was previously important to the Faroses diet but the intake of traditional Faroses foods is decreasing with at likely parallel influence on the iodine intake. Currently, there is no ...

Background: To date, there is no consensus as to the gold-standard screening test for diagnosing Cushing’s Syndrome (CS).Objectives: This study aimed to: a) compare the ability of late-night salivary cortisol (LNSC) against overnight dexamethasone suppression test (ONDT) and urinary free cortisol (UFC) as screening test for pathological hypercortisolism (PH); b) test the performance of those tests in diagnosing Cushing’s disease (CD) or mild au...

The dexamethasone suppression test (DST) is a common screening test in Cushing’s syndrome but associated with false positive result in 10-20%. One cause of false positivity is inadequate dexamethasone absorption. An assay to measure serum dexamethasone concentration can be used to validate the accuracy of the DST result.Aims: To audit 1) Use of the dexamethasone assay in DSTs 2) How frequently dexamethasone levels are inadequate 3) ...

Short synacthen test (SST) is the most widely used dynamic test of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function. It’s simple to conduct but requires nursing time and is relatively costly given 15-fold price increase in synacthen since 2015. We audited our SST use with the aim of reviewing clinical indications for testing and identifying useful predictors of test outcome. Baseline referral, clinical and biochemical data were retrospectively collected for individuals ...

Introduction: Although acromegaly and pituitary gigantism have the same pathological cause, they have different disease characteristics.Aim: To study tumour size, treatment course and the most common comorbidities in a population with young-onset acromegaly.Materials and Methods: UK Acromegaly Register (UKAR, 22 centres, 1997-2017) retrospective analysis, enriched with patients from the FIPA-consortium. We defined gigantism as diag...

There is growing recognition within Endocrinology physician and patient groups of morbidity and mortality in association with prescribing errors and dysnatraemia, in hospitalised patients with cranial diabetes insipidus (CDI). The aims of this study were firstly, to assess outcomes in hospitalised patients with CDI by review of electronic records from 2012-2021, and secondly, to assess the same patient cohort’s perceptions of their care via telephone questionnaire. 109 pa...

Background: Dopamine agonists (DA) are included in the management algorithm of acromegaly. Studies on cabergoline monotherapy report IGF-1 normalisation in between 0% and 100% of the patients during treatment periods ranging between 2.6 and 24 months. However, in many of these studies, previous radiotherapy is a confounding factor. Furthermore, real world data applying the current disease control criteria (normal IGF-1 and GH<1 mg/l) are not available. The aim of this stud...