Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Impaired glucose tolerance and insulin resistance are frequently associated with acromegaly. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of long-acting somatostatin analog treatment on glucose homeostasis in acromegalic patients.Patients and methods: In this prospective study 16 naïve acromegalic patients (eight females, eight males; aged 51.5±10.9 years) were studied before and after 3-month therapy with long-acting somatostat...

Background: The National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) published guidelines in May 2002 on the use of GH in children, recommending GH in 4 conditions: GH deficiency (GHD), Turner Syndrome, Prader-Willi Syndrome and chronic renal insufficiency.Aim: To audit whether GH prescribing at our hospital adheres to NICE guidelines.Methods: A retrospective audit was performed of children commenced on GH treatment between May 2002 an...

Introduction: Despite extensive research into IQ scores in congenital hypothyroidism (CH) during childhood there is little information on adult outcome in terms of pragmatic measures such as educational achievement, employment, residency and relationships.Patients and methods: We present the results of a questionnaire-based study examining these outcome measures in Scottish adults with permanent CH born between 1979 and 1991. The unaffected siblings of o...

Reactive Hypoglycaemia (RH) is a controversial condition that has been popularised in the media and lay literature. A recent survey of randomly selected women in Nottinghamshire revealed that 37.8% experience symptoms that they attribute to a 'low blood sugar', with over 18% experiencing symptoms more than once a week (1). The aim of this study was to investigate whether a non-patient group who report symptoms synonymous with RH have concomitant hypoglycaemia.<p...

The eye is an organ vulnerable to a variety of external and internal stimuli that can abolish its vital function to allow accurate vision of images for survival. Inflammation is the key mediator of immune protection but its consequence leads to the disruption of the visual axis integrity. Due to this precise reason, through adaptation and evolution, the eye has developed mechanisms of immune tolerance and privilege. Glucocorticoids have potent immunosuppressive and anti-inflam...

A 43-year-old roman, previously living in France was referred to the endocrinology department for Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism in 2017. Thyroid function was easily normalized by a treatment by thyroxine. She had also a medical history of severe alopecia since the age of 20. The diagnosis of androgenetic alopecia was made at that time by a French dermatologist and treatment by estradiol valerate 2 mg with cyproterone acetate (CPA) 50 mg was started. The dose of CPA was lower...

Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a neuroendocrine tumor highly resistant to chemo-and radiotherapy. Since several reports showed that cAMP has an antiproliferative effect on different types of solid tumors both in vitro and in vivo, we evaluated the potential anti-neoplastic activity of cAMP analogues (8-Cl-cAMP and the equimolar combination of 8-PIP-cAMP and 8-HA-cAMP) in two MTC cell lines (TT and MZ-CRC-1 that harbor C634W and M918T RET mutations, respecti...

Treatment of adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is still unsatisfactory. As IGF-II and IGF-I receptor are frequently overexpressed in human ACC and inhibitors of the IGF system are currently under preclinical investigation, interference with IGF-signaling might have an additive effect in antitumour treatment. We have therefore analyzed several cytotoxic agents (etoposide, doxorubicine, cisplatin, streptocozin; 0.01–100 μM) on adrenal cell proliferation in vitro an...

Objective: Acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI)-imaging is a novel ultrasound-based elastography method enabling quantitative measurement of tissue stiffness. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the feasibility of ARFI-measurements in the thyroid tissue.Materials and methods: ARFI-imaging involves the mechanical excitation of tissue using short-duration acoustic pulses to generate localized displacements in tissue. The displacements result in...

Oncogenic osteomalacia (tumor induced osteomalacia-TIO) is a rare disease that can lead to severe physical handicap and pains. Its pathogenesis involves the secretion of fibroblast growth factor-23 inducing urinary phosphate loss and consequent hypophosphataemia. We report a case of a TIO caused by a tumor in the nasal cavity. In 2010, a 61-years-old woman was examined because of muscle weakness and arthralgia in the extremities. Her symptomes started ~3 years before her prese...