Endocrine Abstracts

We present a family of a 45-year-old patient who presented to hospital acutely unwell with metastatic paragangliomas. Unfortunately due to rapidity of his presentation, no genetic testing was performed. He was found to have 5 cm right carotid body tumour. His urine collections confirmed raised (seven times normal) 24 h urine metanephrines 24.55 μmol (normal <3.47 μmol). Shortly after the initial diagnosis he was found to have extensive vertebral body metastases i...

A 43-year-old gentleman was referred from a local hospital with biochemical and radiological suspicion of pheochromocytoma. He admitted to a 10-year history of palpitations, flushing, sweating, and tremors. He was intermittently feeling stressed, anxious and angry with mood swings. He had difficulty sleeping and suffered from headaches. He was treated for hypertension and 10 years prior he was admitted to the local hospital with malignant hypertension. He was drinking up to 40...

Exercise has undisputed health benefits mediated through metabolic adaptation in skeletal muscle. In contrast, a sedentary lifestyle, leads to impaired metabolic function and negative health outcomes such as insulin resistance and sarcopenia. Whilst exercise improves skeletal muscle metabolism, how the process is co-ordinated at a cellular level remains unclear. Recently, NAD+ has been suggested to play an important role in muscle adaptation, acting as a substrate f...

A 68-year-old patient was noted to have prognathism, broad fingers and toes and coarse facial features during her admission for a hip replacement 2 years ago. Her family noted change to her facial features and she admitted to increase in her shoe size over 10 years. Her past medical history included treated hypertension only. Her oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) confirmed paradoxical rise of GH with peak 6.23 μg/l. Her initial IGF1 was raised at 131 nmol/l (6–30 nm...

A 33-year-old woman was referred to our service for investigation of secondary amenorrhea. She is from India and moved to the UK 8 years ago. She has two children aged 7 and 4 years. She has a history of TB adenitis treated in 2007 with quadruple anti TB medication for 6 months. She was told she had no pulmonary involvement and was clear after treatment. She is currently on no medication. During 2012 she noticed her menstrual cycles were lengthening with amenorrhoea since Janu...

A 53-year-old retired military soldier had a 9 months history of recurrent blackouts predominately associated with blurred vision, feeling shaky, sweaty and they were mainly before meal. His past medical history included asthma, multiple shrapnel injuries, hearing impairment secondary to blast injury. He was on atorvastatin, ompeprazole and inhalers.He was admitted acutely to his local hospital and blood glucose 0.6 mmol/l was found. Prolonged 72 h fast ...

Background: Primary aldosteronism constitutes the most common form of hormonal hypertension. However, it is often mistreated and widely underdiagnosed. Despite the great progress in laboratory technics of adrenal diseases, in the field of primary aldosteronism there is still a need for novel biomarkers that would clarify the diagnosis in equivocal cases. Adropin is a newly discovered protein that may play a role in glucose metabolism and the development of cardiovascular disea...

Introduction: Phaeochromocytomas are mostly benign tumours with origin from chromaffin tissue of adrenal glands, whereas paragangliomas aretumours located along the sympathetic or/and the parasympathetic chain. Generally they are quite rare neoplasms with ability of producing, storing and secreting of catecholamines. Predominatingly they are sporadic, but in some cases they may develop in progress of particular genetic syndromes, such as multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 (ME...

Adipokines belong to a group of proteins involved in the pathogenesis and progression of immune/inflammatory diseases. It is an open question whether and how adipokines contribute to these diseases. Adiponectin might be a key regulator of the immune system, playing a role in the progression of inflammatory disorders. Omentin has been recognized as an anti-inflammatory adipokine with influence on immune response regulation and inflammation, Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a chronic...

Background: O-6-Methylguanine-DNA-methyltransferase (MGMT) is a DNA repair enzyme. It has been demonstrated that its higher expression counteracts cytotoxicity of alkylating agents used in the treatment of glioblastoma or invasive pituitary tumors. Little is known on the relationships between MGMT expression and invasiveness of corticotroph adenomas in Cushing disease (CD).The Aim: To evaluate MGMT expression and its associations with clinical, neuropath...