Endocrine Abstracts

Classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) usually presents at birth with ambiguous genitalia or adrenal failure. Non-classical forms can present later with precocious puberty or may only present, in early adult life, with hyperandrogenism and amenorrhoea.An 86 year old lady presented with a toxic confusional state, male pattern balding and hirsuitism. Little history was available. The provisional diagnosis was an androgen secreting tumour, however, a history taken fro...

Hypercalcaemia is a prevalent complication in malignancies as a consequence of tumor secretion of parathyroid hormone related peptide (PTHrP). This complication is also associated with ovarian dysgerminomas but is much less common than for other tumours. To investigate this further we have studied 10 cases of dysgerminoma, assessing biochemical parameters and analysing mRNA and protein expression in tissue biopsies. Pathological reports show raised serum calcium and 1,25(OH)<s...

The cortisol day curve has been advocated in the assessment of glucocorticoid replacement therapy in adrenal failure but remains controversial.Objective: To determine the validity of this test within our practice.Method: A retrospective analysis using endocrine laboratory dataset.Results: 102 inpatient cortisol day curves from 76 patients were analysed. The serum cortisol was checked at 5 time points (pre and 1 hour post morning dose, before midday dose, pre and po...

Macroprolactin is a complex of prolactin with immunoglobulin appearing to have limited biological activity, partly due to failure of this high-molecular weight complex to cross capillary walls.Macroprolactinaemia is a common phenomenon, it is thus important to identify this condition in order to avoid unnecessary investigations and treatment. Although the presence of macroprolactin can be confirmed by gel filtration chromatography, this is time consumin...

Graves' disease (GD) is caused by thyroid stimulating antibodies (TSAb) which are thyrotropin (TSH) agonists. Thyroid peroxidase (TPO) antibodies, although markers of thyroid auto-immunity are not involved in the pathogenesis of GD. Despite this, TPO antibodies are frequently used to establish the etiology of thyrotoxicosis. It was our aim to compare TPO antibodies with TSAb in a cohort of thyrotoxic patients to determine whether TPO antibodies and TSAb could be regarded as eq...

Maternal hypothyroidism disrupts fetal brain development in the rat; affected parameters include several neuron-specific cytoskeletal proteins and neurotransmitter metabolic enzymes. The aim of this study was to determine whether maternal hyperthyroidism also impacts upon fetal neuronal development.Partially thyroidectomised rat dams were subcutaneously implanted with osmotic pumps to infuse either 1.5 micrograms thyroxine/100 g body weight/day (HYPER) o...

Milk – alkali syndrome is a rare and distinctive disorder caused by ingestion of large amounts of calcium and absorbable alkali resulting in hypercalcemia. It is characterized by a triad of hypercalcemia, metabolic alkalosis and renal failure. Here we present a 59 years old female patient, who presented to Emergency department for a fall and Syncopal episode. She had a few days history of increasing thirst, polyuria and diffuse abdominal discomfort. This prior to her sync...

A 31-year-old lady was referred to the outpatient endocrine clinic for subfertility, intermittent galactorrhoea and amenorrhoea since birth of her son 5 year ago. However, she denied visual disturbances and headache. She was struggling to lose weight but she had no clinical features suggestive of corticosteroid or growth hormone excess apart from an increase in her UK shoe size from 5.5 to 6.5 and family members noted her hands were slightly bigger. She was on an antidepressan...

Introduction: Clinical Practice Guidelines1 advocate adrenal vein sampling (AVS) to distinguish between unilateral and bilateral primary aldosteronism (PA). Cannulating the right adrenal vein is difficult, and there is a lack of standardisation in sampling procedure and interpretation2. We audited our local service to identify improvements.Methods: All AVS procedures performed between January 2018-December 2020 (n = 31) wer...

The nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) dependent Poly-(ADP-ribosyl)polymerase 1 (PARP1) generates the post-translational modification ADP-Ribosylation (ADPR). Molecular studies have identified potential for NAD+ consuming enzymes to influence metabolic function. Given that PARP1 determines cellular NAD+ concentrations and ADPR shifts target protein activity, we sought to identify the molecular actions of PARP1 within skeletal muscle. Analysis of C2C12 lysates demonstrate...