Endocrine Abstracts

A 63-year-old gentleman with hypopituitarism secondary to non-functioning pituitary macro adenoma, treated with trans sphenoidal surgery 16 years earlier, was admitted with chest pain. His ECG showed 3 mm ST elevation in the inferolateral leads, and his subsequent cardiac enzymes were consistent with acute myocardial infarction. A decision was made not to thrombolyse him, as any intracranial tumour is an absolute contraindication to thrombolysis. He was discussed with the tert...

A 64 old year old obese (BMI 31 kg/m2) Caucasian male was admitted to our hospital with general malaise, nausea, vomiting and dehydration. He gave no preceding history of polyuria, polydipsia or weight loss. He had been receiving oral corticosteroids for established ulcerative colitis. He was found to have random plasma glucose of 70.7 mmol/l, positive serum and urine ketones, and metabolic acidosis with PH 7.27, bicarbonate 13 mmol/l and base excess −12.4. Th...

The aim of this study was to compare the effects of prostaglandin EP2 – and EP4 -receptor agonists on uterine tissue taken from non-pregnant and pregnant mice.Uterine tissue was taken from non-pregnant animals during dioestrus and from pregnant animals on day 18 of gestation. Samples were set-up for superfusion (Krebs’ solution with 1 μM indometacin at 2 ml/min and 37 °C) as previously described by Senior et a...

The integrity of bone marrow and its various haemopoeitic cells require several hormones including sex steroids. Sex steroids were used in the past to treat aplastic anaemia. A 27 years old Saudi male who underwent a resection of hypothalamic astrocytoma and developed panhypopituitarism was admitted to ICU with shunt related meningitis and noted to have thrombocytopenia of 90,000 anemia of 9.5 gldl, which progressed over the subsequent week following admission. He recovered fr...

In human critical care, patients with the highest cortisol concentrations generally have the highest mortality rates, with resultant prognostic classifications based on basal cortisol and/or delta cortisol concentrations. In contrast, comparative data on canine critical illness does not exist. Parvoviral diarrhoea is a severe infectious disease inducing a sepsis-like state predominantly in paediatric canine patients. The objective of this study was to evaluate the prognostic v...

We have previously shown PTTG and PBF to be over-expressed in differentiated thyroid cancer and to be prognostic indicators for recurrence. Subsequently we reported PBF to be a transforming gene in vitro and tumourigenic in vivo. Since over-expression of PTTG results in the same findings, we examined whether PBF-induced tumourigenesis was an independent effect, or else a result of increased PTTG activity. Two HA-tagged mutants of PBF were generated, firstly subst...

Deiodinase enzymes have an important role in thyroid hormone metabolism. Type I 5′-monodeiodinase (D1) converts thyroxine (T4) to triiodothyronine (T3), while type III 5-monodeiodinase (D3) inactivates T3 and produces reverse-T3 (rT3) from T4. In fetal sheep, plasma T3 rises towards term in association with the prepartum cortisol surge. This study investigated the effect of cortisol on tissue de...

Background: Thyrotropin-secreting pituitary adenomas (TSH-omas) account for 1% of pituitary tumours. In addition to TSH, these tumours frequently secrete glycoprotein α-subunit (αSU) and up to 50% are immunoreactive for growth hormone (GH), although GH suppression following oral glucose tolerance testing (OGTT) has not been routinely performed in all patients to identify subclinical GH hypersecretion or abnormal GH suppression.Objectives: To ex...

Pseudohypoparathyroidism-1b (PHP-1b) is a genetically and biochemically distinct disorder characterised by selective PTH resistance limited to the kidney and lack of Albright Hereditary Osteodystrophy (AHO). Due to calcium mobilization from bone, patients with PHP-1b may remain asymptomatic and undiagnosed for a long time. Coexistent vitamin D deficiency sometime unmasks the clinical presentation of the disease.A 15-year-old Kuwaiti male presented with s...

Recent studies have shown that serum concentrations of AMH (produced by granulosa cells of the human ovary) are positively related to the number of antral follicles and are negatively correlated with age. Like inhibin B (also a granulosa cell product) AMH is thought to be a useful clinical marker of follicle reserve. Serum AMH concentrations have been reported to be higher than normal in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which is characterised by an excess of antral...