Endocrine Abstracts

Background: In obese adults, caloric restriction leads to a reduction in energy expenditure, and it is this compensatory adaptive down-regulation that is cited as one of the causes of weight regain in adults. There are currently insufficient data to establish if this phenomenon also occurs in obese children who lose weight and whether puberty affects this adaptive response.Objective: We hypothesised that obese children who lose weight have less ‘ref...

Background: Gastroenteropancreatic Neuroendocrine Neoplasms (GEP-NENs) are a rare subset of cancers which nevertheless are a rising health burden. Development of new therapies suffers from several bottlenecks, including low patient accrual and poor understanding of tumor characteristics. Patient tumor organoids (PTOs) are a novel model capable of improving screening of patient tissue in an accurate, standardized, and high-throughput capacity. In this study, we utilized patient...

Background: The cyclic GMP-AMP synthase stimulator of interferon genes (cGAS-STING) signalling pathway is an element of the innate immune response and is activated by the presence of DNA in the cytosol. Triggering of this immune response may occur in the setting of infection or neoplasia. Activation of this pathway results in phosphorylation of interferon regulatory factor 3 and downstream transcription of cytokines such as interferon β and interleukin-6. Polyinosinic:pol...

Background: Sympathetic pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas (PPGLs) are rare neuroendocrine tumors associated with excess catecholamine production. Routine biochemical and imaging surveillance to monitor for recurrence and metastasis is recommended. However, there is limited data describing optimal surveillance approaches and post-operative biochemical thresholds for detecting recurrences or metastases. This study sought to correlate biochemical and imaging surveillance with ...

Background: Advanced small cell lung cancer (SCLC), extra-pulmonary neuroendocrine carcinoma (EP-NEC) and pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDA) are rapidly progressive cancers characterized by unbridled replication stress. Patients with these malignancies possess dismal prognoses with limited options after initial first-line chemotherapy. These tumors rely on the integrity of DNA damage repair pathways to ensure genomic stability. The ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3-related (ATR) pro...

PARADIGHM™ is a global registry (NCT01922440) of patients diagnosed with hypoparathyroidism (HPT) ≥6 months regardless of aetiology and management. Routine medical care data were entered using electronic case report forms; the 36-item Short Form Health Survey was completed by patients. Baseline-recorded data are reported for 492 patients enrolled as of 1 December 2016 from 41 centres. At baseline, 78% were women, mean (S.D.) age was 49 (17)...

Prostate cancer (PC) is the most common malignancy and third most common cause of cancer-related death among men in Europe. Although most PCs grow slowly, 20–25% of the patients believed to have organ-confined disease will experience biochemical recurrence already during 5-years of follow-up. The standard treatment against advanced PC is androgen deprivation (ADT). Unfortunately, androgen deprivation treatment eventually fails leading to the emergence of castration resist...

The Endocrine Society guidelines recommend initial testing for Cushing’s syndrome (CS) can be based on non-invasive late-night salivary cortisol measurement (NSC). In the BHSCT NSC (11pm), measured using the IBL ELISA kit has been found to be highly discriminative in identifying patients with CS. However it is a labour intensive test and the need for analysing samples in batches delays turnaround time, limiting its use in the routine work-up for CS. Roche provide an autom...

Background: Hypospadias in boys may be associated with a lack of androgen exposure during the masculinisation programming window. As testosterone has effects on the vasculature, we assessed whether boys with hypospadias show evidence of vascular dysfunction.Methods: Excess foreskin tissue was obtained from boys undergoing hypospadias repair (cases) or circumcision (controls) and small arteries dissected. Vascular contractility was assessed by wire myogra...

Introduction: Immune dysregulation is a feature of Cushing’s syndrome (CS). We report a case of CS that presented with rapidly developing cutaneous Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS).Case description: A previously well 59-year-old heterosexual man presented with a two-month history of proximal muscle weakness, recurrent mouth ulcers, and purplish skin lesions. He had a background history of hypertension. Skin biopsies were compatible with KS. History of pas...