Endocrine Abstracts

Background: A hydrocortisone day curve can be used to assess a patient's steroid replacement. However the need for venous samples requires patients to be admitted to hospital either over-night or as a day case and tablet times may vary compared to the patients' usual practice.Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether patients could collect capillary or salivary cortisol at home and whether these collections were reproducible.<p class=...

The syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone (SIADH) is characterised by euvolamic hyponatraemia. Patients with SIADH continue to drink normal amounts of fluid, despite plasma osmolalities well below the physiological osmotic threshold for the onset of thirst. The regulation of thirst has not been previously studied in SIADH. We studied the characteristics of osmotically-stimulated thirst and vasopressin (AVP) secretion, and the non-osmotic suppression of thirst and AVP ...

BackgroundHeart failure is a syndrome of vaso-constriction and hormone abnormalities. There is an excess of catabolic and vasoconstrictor hormones and a relative deficiency of anabolic hormones. Vaso-dilating drugs improve symptoms in heart failure and inhibition of some catabolic / vasoconstrictor hormones improves prognosis. We aimed to study the direct vascular effects of testosterone resistance arteries from men with heart failure.Methods6 resistance arteries w...

Objectives: We have recently demonstrated a wide variation in insulin resistance (IR) occurs in polycystic ovarian syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Changes in insulin metabolism and increased insulin resistance (IR) after the menopause have previously been reported. It is unknown if the biological variation of IR is affected by the menopause and is evaluated here.Methods: The biological variation of IR was assessed by measuring IR at four day intervals on 10 consecutive occas...

Increased mortality in patients with acromegaly has been confirmed in a number of retrospective studies, but causative factors and relationship to serum IGF1 remain uncertain. The West Midlands Acromegaly database contains details of 419 patients (178 males). Serum IGF1 data from the Regional Endocrine Laboratory was available for 338 patients (81%). At diagnosis mean age was 47 years (range 12-84) and mean GH was 70plus/minus5.4 milliunits per litre. 61% were treated by surge...

Background: Testosterone treatment has been shown to increase exercise capacity in men with chronic heart failure but the mechanism of benefit is unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the acute haemodyamic effects of testosterone in men with heart failure.Methods: Twelve men with stable heart failure (age 62.8 (8.8)years; ejection fraction 30.9 (6.3)% (NR>60%)) were enrolled in a double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over study. Cardiac o...

Advances in the treatment of acromegaly mean biochemical 'cure ' should be possible in the vast majority of patients. The challenge of the future will be designing treatment algorithms to optimise outcomes for individual patients, to ensure not only life expectancy but also QOL is normalised. QOL data is lacking in acromegaly, as is a disease-specific tool for measuring QOL. ACROQOL is a disease-specific QOL questionnaire compromising 22 questions (scored 1-5, high score good)...

Growth hormone (GH) is thought to have a dual effect (direct and indirect) on bone metabolism. We sought to explore the inter-relationships and potential determinant factors of several markers of bone turnover in GH deficient adults (GHD), as well as possible acute changes arising from GH.24 GHD subjects [14 M, 10F; age (range, 24-74 yrs)] were studied after consent and ethical approval. They were randomised into three groups (GP) of 8 subjects, each to ...

Resistin, a novel signalling molecule isolated in mice, has been suggested to be the putative hormone thought to link obesity with type 2 diabetes. As central obesity is associated with a higher risk of diabetes, we compared resistin mRNA expression in abdominal fat depots to thigh and breast adipose tissue. Mononuclear cells are also known to expression resistin, therefore, CD45 expression (a marker of mononuclear blood cells), was also analysed. RNA was extracted from 32 hum...

Introduction: Impairment of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis has been reported widely in children treated with inhaled corticosteroids (ICS). The integrity of HPA axis has been assessed using low (500 ng/1.73 m2 body surface area) and standard (250 mg) dose short synacthen tests (SST). Serum cortisol is measured at 0, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 min intervals in the low dose SST (LDSST) and at 0, 30 and 60 min in the standard dose SST (SDSST). The L...