Endocrine Abstracts

Metabolic pathologies mainly originate from dysfunctions of the white adipose tissue (AT). Functional differences in AT and their impact on metabolism seem associated with the fat depot regional distribution, in particular the subcutaneous (SAT) and visceral (VAT) pads. Human adult adipose stem cell (ASC) populations have recently been characterized from SAT and VAT. In this study, using human ASC cultures obtained from paired biopsies of abdominal SAT, S-ASC, and VAT, V-ASC, ...

Context: Recent studies showed a high prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms in patients with primary hyperaldosteronism (PA). A cross-sectional analysis suggested only minor improvement following adrenalectomy (ADX) and mineralocorticoidreceptor antagonist (MRA) therapy.Objective: Our aim was to determine the course of anxiety and depression in untreated patients.Design: We investigated 15 patients with PA at time of diagno...

Obesity is characterized by an increase of endocannabinoid circulating levels as anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoyl-glycerol (2AG). Whether these lipids represent a biomarker of dysmetabolism or merely reflect the fat mass spill-over is still unclear. After generating rigorous, gender specific, plasma reference intervals by 2D-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, we defined the 97.5thcentile of endocannabinoid distribution in the normal population as the cut-off ab...

Corepressors and coactivators mediate thyroid hormone receptor-dependent repression and transactivation of positively-regulated target genes respectively, but their role in negative regulation is not understood.A 4 years old boy was born at 31 weeks. He was jittery at birth, with neonatal respiratory distress. Childhood features included poor weight gain, heat intolerance, tachycardia and hyperactivity. Ongoing problems are low frequency hearing loss, po...

DNA methylation has recently been shown to play a role in postnatal as well as developmental gene regulation. Transfer and removal of methyl groups from CpG islands in the promoter region of specific genes has been associated with gene silencing or activation, respectively. POMC is known to present several methylation sites and demethylation of these sites has been shown to be linked to POMC expression by neuroendocrine tumors outside the pituitary.<p class="...

It is well established that neonatal mortality is greater in the leaner commercial (C) porcine genotypes compared to the ancient Meishan (M) breed, which has a higher percentage of body fat. Piglets do not express UCP1, responsible for heat production in neonatal mammals, although they do express UCP2. The aim of this study was to investigate the endocrine and metabolic control of UCP2 expression between the C and M genotypes.Piglets from 15 C and 15 M l...

Introduction: There is a large body of evidence to suggest that the GH axis plays an important role in brain myelination. However, results from studies in humans with an abnormal GH axis have varied and therefore there remains no consensus as to whether the GH/IGF1 axis plays a significant role in neural development. No previous studies have used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) a sensitive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique for studying brain white matter tracts, to add...

Overt hypercortisolism causes reduction in bone mass and density. The effects of subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (SCS) on bone markers and structure are still debated. We therefore studied 56 patients with adrenal incidentaloma: group A=35 (20 F 15 M, age 43–79, mean 64.6±1.5; BMI 29.9±0.9 kg/m2) without evidence of hypercortisolism, and group B=21 (10 F 11 M, age 51–76, mean 63.4±1.9, BMI 28.0±1.2 kg/m2) with SCS (i.e. w...

Introduction: The true prevalence of clinically relevant pituitary adenomas has been reevaluated at 1/1064 of the population (1). Among them, prolactinomas represent the majority with a prevalence of 1/2000. They occur usually in females, aged 20–50 Y.O., and 80% are microadenomas. Nearly 5% of prolactinomas appear in a familial or genetic setting (MEN-1 or FIPA) (2). Cabergoline is proposed as the first line therapy and is usually efficient to normalize prolactin (PRL) l...

Introduction: Autoimmune disease is a rare event occurring after remission of Cushing’s syndrome. We report on the appearance of new onset vitiligo in a patient treated for Cushing disease due to a an invasive pituitary adenoma, after bilateral adrenalectomy.Case report: A 64-year-old man presented to our endocrinology clinic with progressive lumbar pain that had developed two months earlier. He had undergone bilateral adrenalectomy for Cushing&#146...