Endocrine Abstracts

C reactive protein is a sensitive marker of subclinical inflammation. C-reactive protein is associated with obesity, diabetes mellitus and increased cardiovascular risk. The mechanism of elevated CRP levels could have connections with insulin resistance. Inflammation seems to have significant role in pathogenesis of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study is to show that the subjects with greater insulin resistance, measured by HOMA-IR have higher levels of ...

Introduction: Therapeutic approach of patients (pts) with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) may include the use of biological agents such as m-TOR inhibitors: temsirolimus (TM) and everolimus (EV). Its use is associated with metabolic dysfunction, especially with everolimus: hyperglycemia (37% TM treated pts vs 72% EV treated pts), hypercholesterolemia (25% TM treated pts vs 81% EV treated pts) and hypertriglyceridemia (30% TM treated pts vs 73% EV treated pts). Discontin...

Glucocorticoids (Gc) are potent anti-inflammatory agents, but their clinical use is limited by their significant side effects. The effects of glucocorticoids are mediated by the cytosolic glucocorticoid receptor (GR), which regulates transcription by transactivation or transrepression. Independent of these genomic effects of the GR are other, very rapid non-genomic effects.The glucocorticoid receptor forms a complex with hsp90, FKBP51, FKBP52 and cyp40 i...

The effects of N-terminal parathyroid hormone (PTH) and parathyroid hormone related peptides (PTHrP) on the spontaneous contractility of 4 days pregnant mouse uterus in vitro were investigated. The myometrial tissue contracted vigorously for several hours, when incubated in organ baths in De Jalon's solution. PTH(1-34) and PTHrP(1-40) caused similar dose related inhibitions of contractions over a dose range of 10-9 to 10-7 M. C terminal PTHrP(107-139) was devoid of this...

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...

Background: PCO is more prevalent among SA than C and IR is central to its pathogenesis; whilst Type 2 diabetes (DM) is commoner in SA. We compared the phenotype and IR in South Asian and Caucasians with PCOS.Methods: Comparison of consecutive anovular PCOS; 47 SA and 36 Caucasians and their age and weight matched controls (11 SA and 22 Cs).Results: SA presented earlier (age 26 plus/minus 4 v 30.1 plus/minus 5, p = 0.005). BMI (24....

We are investigating mice treated with the chemical mutagen N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) to establish models for hereditary bone disorders such as osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and skeletal dysplasias. We report on one such mouse model designated Longpockets (Lpk). Mice were kept in accordance with national welfare guidelines and project license restrictions. Lpk/+ mice are viable and fertile, present with short humeri by two weeks of birth and have a...

Because the sodium iodide symporter, NIS, may be artificially expressed in cells to introduce ablative doses of radioactive iodide, it may be of clinical use. NIS is normally found in the basolateral membrane of thyrocytes and its expression and activity are known to be regulated by TSH. We have used primary cultures of human thyrocytes to examine other regulators of NIS activity. NIS activity was measured as uptake of 125I into cells in the presence of the thyroper...

Interferon therapy for chronic hepatitis C infection has been associated with thyroid abnormalities. We sought to characterise the incidence of this in a cohort of treated hepatitis C patients receiving weekly pegylated interferon therapy in a tertiary Hepatology unit. Patients were scheduled to receive 24 or 48 weeks treatment with monthly thyroid function tests (TFTs). Data was collected from electronic treatment records of 154 consecutive patients and analysed by a single i...

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic autoimmune disease with a subclinical prodromal period characterized by the presence of circulating antibodies to various islet cell proteins. Our main objective is to estimate the prevalence of diabetes-associated autoantibodies in a group of 1st degree relatives, compared to healthy control subjects. Also, we tried to assess the insulin secretory capacity in subjects having multiple antibodies using first phase insulin response (FPIR) to intraven...