Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: Pheochromocytoma is a rare disease with an incidence of 2–6 per million, and a prevalence of 0.1–0.6% in patients with hypertension. Pheochromocytoma may occur sporadically or as part of hereditary syndrome. According to the latest studies, among patients with non-syndromic pheochromocytoma, up to 24% of tumors may be inherited. However, genetic testing was not generally performed until recently. There is still a debate which pheochromocytoma patient shoul...

Objective: Age- and gender-specific reference values for quality of life (QoL) measures are important to assess the impact of growth hormone deficiency (GHD). The objective of this study was to develop population-based data for the QoL-AGHDA instrument for Germany and to compare this data with corresponding Qol-AGHDA scores of the German KIMS cohort during growth hormone treatment, to investigate the association between the Qol-AGHDA score and the IGF-1 values in the German KI...

Background: Obesity is a major risk factor for the development of chronic diseases and a determinant of cardiovascular disease. Divergent associations between obesity and hormonal changes have been reported. The objective of the present study was to analyse the associations between different anthropometric measurements and serum hormone levels including insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), thyroid-stimulation hormone (TSH), prolactin, and testosterone.M...

Background: Acromegaly is associated with increased morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease. Several studies indicate that reduction of growth hormone (GH) to <1 μg/l or normalization of serum IGF-I reduces mortality to expected levels. Inflammatory markers, such as C-reactive protein (CRP) or haemostatic markers, such as fibrinogen have emerged as important cardiovascular risk markers in the general population.Objective and design: ...

In the framework of close interactions between the immune and neuroendocrine systems, Growth Hormone (GH) has been proposed to exert significant effects on the immune system, but there is not yet a consensus about GH immunomodulatory properties. These studies investigated the immune and anti-infectious response of dwarf Ghrh−/− mice presenting a severe deficiency of the GHRH/GH/IGF-1 axis. In basal conditions, thymic parameters and T-cell respon...

Introduction: Testosterone circulates in the blood mainly bound to albumin and human sex-hormone-binding globulin (hSHBG). It is generally admitted that only the protein unbound fraction of testosterone (free hormone hypothesis) is biologically active. From our routine SHBG binding assay, we observed that SHBG concentration may have an influence on its affinity for testosterone (personal data). To further explore this assumption we used surface plasmon resonance (SPR, Biacore)...

Background: Prospective studies showed that low serum testosterone concentrations are associated with various cardiometabolic risk factors and mortality. But the causal nature of these associations is controversial.Methods: We studied 1882 men aged 20–79 years with serum testosterone concentrations and genotyping data from the longitudinal population-based Study of Health in Pomerania.Testosterone concentrations were cross-sec...

Aim: The aim of this analysis was to determine whether low serum testosterone (T) and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) levels predict the development of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in men.Methods: Data were obtained from the Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP), a population-based prospective cohort of adults aged 20–79 at baseline. Analyses were conducted in 1004 men without baseline MetS, defined by National Cholesterol Education Program Adult ...

Objective: The German KIMS Database is a national surveillance study for evaluation of efficacy and safety of growth hormone (GH) replacement therapy in adults with GH deficiency (GHD) in clinical practice.Patients: The analysis was performed using data of 1425 consecutively documented adult patients (777 men, 648 women) with GHD enrolled in KIMS Germany. The present report examined baseline and long term data (>48 months, range: 48–161 month) f...

Objective: The role of smoking in the pathogenesis of thyroid enlargement is currently under debate. The aim of this paper was to investigate the role of smoking on thyroid volume change and incident goiter for different age-strata in a region with normalized iodine supply.Methods: The population-based Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) compromised 3300 subjects with complete 5-year examination follow-up. Data from 2484 participants without known thyroi...