Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Neuroendocrine tumours (NET) can affect various tissues and organs, have different clinical presentation and prognosis, depending on the primary tumour site, grading, differentiation and functional status. Reported prevalence of bone metastases (BM) from NETs has been increasing with improved imaging modalities, reaching >40% in some reports. The BM diagnosis is associated with reduced overall survival; however, this was not confirmed by all studies.<p clas...

A decline in skeletal muscle nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) can decrease mitochondrial function and energy metabolism in age-related metabolic disease. Restoration of NAD+ using the precursor nicotinamide riboside (NR) may serve to support age and disease driven impairment of mitochondrial energy metabolism. Manipulating NAD+, and consequently cellular pyridine nucleotide NAD(P)(H) pools, may impact the flux of glucose through intermediary energy metabolism pathways....

Background: Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) and Antral Follicle Count (AFC) are both principally used as markers of ovarian reserve and available in all UK hospitals. The utility of these markers in the binary diagnosis of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) by published criteria, such as Rotterdam, has been previously reported. We evaluated their utility in the evaluation of oligo/amenorrhoea in healthy young non-obese women.Methods: Women with both ov...

Introduction: British Army recruits suffer from musculoskeletal injuries (MSI) during initial training. Up to 10% suffer skeletal stress fracture (SFx) resulting in lost training days and medical attrition. There is evidence to suggest that vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in the army. Our aim was to determine vitamin D metabolites (VDM) in recruits upon starting training, and health outcomes after a 14-week training programme.Methods: ...

Specific variations in the human glucocorticoid receptor (GR) gene associate with increased cardiovascular disease risk. GR signalling is essential for cardiac maturation in utero and adult mice with cardiomyocyte and vascular smooth muscle deletion of GR (SMGRKO mice) have cardiac hypertrophy, fibrosis and impaired function. Intriguingly, levels of left ventricle (LV) mRNA encoding the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR), which is pro-fibrotic in heart, rise postnatally ...

Pituitary tumor-transforming gene binding factor (PBF) is a ubiquitous glycoprotein which is over-expressed in thyroid, breast and other endocrine cancers, and modulates cellular invasion, radioiodine uptake and thyroid hormone efflux. Papillary thyroid cancer patients with high PBF expression show decreased disease-specific survival compared to those with lower expression. PBF expression has recently been correlated with breast cancer metastasis and colon cancer extra-mural v...

Background: NEQAS data demonstrate a divergence in bias of cortisol immunoassays over the last 10 years. Despite this, a serum cortisol of 50 nmol/l has been universally applied as the cut-off for the overnight dexamethasone suppression test (ONDST), the commonest screening test for Cushing’s syndrome.Aims: To assess the effect of assay bias on interpretation of the ONDST and determine the necessity for a method-specific cut-off.<p class="abstex...

Increased adiposity is associated with insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and metabolic dysfunction. Altered adipokine secretion, changes in local and systemic glucocorticoid metabolism and increased inflammation have all been postulated as contributory mechanisms. We have previously described changes in subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) gene expression that are associated with obesity and glucose intolerance in cross-sectional studies. However, the effects of longitudinal ch...

Introduction: Patients with subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (SCS) present with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, however, the beneficial effect of adrenalectomy on cardiovascular risk factors is uncertain.Objective: Systematic meta-analysis to determine the effect of adrenalectomy vs conservative follow-up on cardiovascular risk factors in patients with adrenal tumors and SCS.Methods: We searched 6 databases thr...

Introduction: Patients with MEN1 have increased morbidity and mortality compared to those patients with sporadic NETs. No genotype-phenotype correlation is described and age-related clinical penetrance surpasses 50 and 90% by 20 and 40 years, respectively. The aim of the audit was to compare the screening programme for MEN1 patients with MEN1 clinical guidelines.Methods: Case notes of MEN1 patients attending a tertiary NET-multidisciplinary team (MDT) in...