Endocrine Abstracts

Obesity and its comorbidities are reaching epidemic proportions. Maternal obesity is known to predispose the offspring to metabolic disorders, independently of genetic inheritance. This intergenerational transmission has also been suggested for paternal obesity during the pre-conception stage, as it appears to have a negative impact on the metabolic and reproductive health of the offspring, likely via epigenetic changes in spermatozoa. However, whether paternal obesity sensiti...

Introduction: Patients with large non-functioning pituitary macroadenomas often have symptoms due to varying degree of hypopituitarism and/or mass effect on visual structures, while presentation with hydrocephalus is extremely uncommon.Case report: We describe an 82-year-old man who was referred to the Neurology department of our hospital because of rapidly progressive memory loss. The patient was in good health until ten weeks earlier, when he insidious...

Introduction: Smoking affects thyroid function, the magnitude and direction of the effect varies greatly with different studies. Less is known about the effect of smoking in thyroid function during pregnancy.Materials and methods: Healthy pregnant women with not known thyroid dysfunction were questioned about smoking habit in the first trimester of pregnancy. Blood samples for TSH, free T4 (fT4) and free T3 (fT3) were obtained in each trimester and for t...

Fibrosis represents a major health concern and presently has no successful treatment. Chronic liver fibrosis leads to portal hypertension, cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma and liver failure. Transforming growth factor β (TGFβ), the main profibrogenic factor, mediates its actions mainly through activation of Smad transcription factors. We have previously observed a cross-talk between the thyroid hormone receptors (TRs) and the TGFβ pathway by which the thyroid...

Introduction: Some authors consider aldosteronism to be a spectrum, ranging from aldosterone-associated (or low-renin) hypertension (AAH) to primary hyperaldosteronism (PHA) due to bilateral adrenal hyperplasia. Thus, blood pressure (BP) response to mineralocorticoid-receptor blockade (MRB) could be similar.Methods: Retrospective analysis of 60 patients. Screening per Endocrine Society guidelines, positive screening: aldosterone (pg/ml) to direct-renin (...

Introduction: Hypothyroidism (hT) is a very common disease that can affect inpatients prognosis. We analysed the clinical profile of patients with hT admitted to Internal Medicine using a large clinical-administrative database.Methods: A descriptive analysis based on the minimum-data-set database of the Spanish National health System of patients who were discharged from the services of Internal Medicine with the diagnoses of hT during 2005–2012 was ...

Introduction: Furosemide can be used in the treatment of SIADH. However, to be effective, renal medulla osmolality (OsmRM) as reflected in urinary osmolality (UOSM) must be high. Sodium is the most important contributor to OsmRM, which increases following the administration of oral salt. We analyze the use of an oral salt load followed by furosemide for the acute/short-term treatment of euvolemic SIADH hyponatremia.Method...

Introduction: Chronic tolvaptan (TV) therapy has been found to be safe and effective in the treatment of chronic SIADH. However, experience with modification of doses over time is limited.Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of weekly TV doses (mg) in 41 patients with chronic SIADH treated for a minimum of 3 months, seen a week following discharge and monthly thereafter. Serum sodium (SNa) goal was 137–140 mmol/l, with 50% TV dose reductio...

Objective: To describe the clinical characteristics and post-surgical outcome of our primary hyperparathyroidism case series.Methods: A retrospective cohort study of primary hyperparathyroidism patients who underwent surgery in the last 10 years in our centre. The medical records were reviewed to extract data. A statistical descriptive analysis was performed using mean and S.D. for continuous variables and percentages for qualitative varia...

Transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ), which plays a key role in cancer and fibrotic disorders, mediates its actions mainly through activation of Smad transcription factors, which bind to Smad Binding Elements (SBEs) in target genes. We have previously observed that the thyroid hormone T3 blocks transactivation of SBE-containing reporter plasmids by TGFβ, and represses transcription of endogenous TGFβ target genes. We have now analysed the thyroid ho...