Endocrine Abstracts

A 31-year-old woman presented with oligomenorrhoea and a raised prolactin. Pituitary scan revealed a 1.8 cm pituitary mass with compression of the optic chiasm. TSH was normal at 3.66 mIU/l with a raised FT4 of 25.8 pmol/l. The rest of pituitary function was normal. Visual fields demonstrated a bitemporal upper quadrantanopia. A diagnosis of TSH-secreting pituitary adenoma was suspected because of the high normal TSH in the presence of a high FT4. She und...

: A 61-year-old gentleman was referred to the Endocrine team with acute bilateral adrenal haemorrhage. He had undergone a successful left popliteal embolectomy for critical limb ischaemia a week ago following which he was commenced on anticoagulation therapy. He presented to the Emergency Department with acute severe abdominal pain and low grade pyrexia of 37.6 C. He was haemodynamically stable. His International Normalised Ratio was noted to be elevated at 4.7. An urgent abdo...

Carotid intima–media thickness (IMT) has been shown an independent predictive marker of coronary artery disease (CAD) and cardiovascular disease in many studies. We investigated the usefulness of carotid IMT as a screening test for CAD in Korean diabetic patients. We conducted retrospective study and found the type 2 diabetic patients without cardiovascular disease history who underwent carotid ultrasonography (US) and stress echocardiography (SE) from June 2006 to Decemb...

Introduction: ACTH-producing pheochromocytoma has been rarely reported, ranging from 3 to 25% of the ectopic ACTH syndrome. Moreover, a few cases of Cushing’s syndrome (CS) accompanied with opportunistic infections have been reported. We experienced a case of pheochromocytoma with ectopic CS, complicated by invasive aspergillosis.Case report: A 35-year-old woman visited our hospital because of headache for 2 months. She presented with typical cushin...

Aims: HDL have many diverse functions. The goal of this study was to determine the differential effect of HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) and apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) on the development of type 2 diabetes (T2D). In addition, this study determined the association between the ratio of HDL-C to apoA-I (HA) and incident T2D.Methods: A total of 27 988 subjects with impaired fasting glucose (IFG) (18 266 men and 9722 women) aged 21 to 91 years (mean age 43.5 years)...

Objective: Menopausal transition contributes to sarcopenia, but the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on sarcopenia in postmenopausal women have not been determined. This study assessed the effect of HRT on sarcopenia in postmenopausal women.Methods: The present study included 4,254 postmenopausal women who participated in the Korea National Health and Nutritional Examination Surveys in 2008–2011. Appendicular skeletal muscle mass divide...

Biotin is used in many hormone immunoassays as an immobilizing system as streptavidin binds biotin with high affinity. Recently, cases with spurious results from biotin interference have been increasing due to widespread use of vitamin supplements containing biotin. We report two cases of erroneously high total T3 levels caused by biotin interference.Case 1: A 88-year-old female who had total thyroidectomy for papillary thyroid cancer 10 years ago and ha...

Measurement of plasma cortisol by immunoassay after ACTH1–24 stimulation is used to assess the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis. Liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) has greater specificity and equilibrium dialysis allows measurement of free plasma cortisol. We investigated whether measuring cortisol by LC–MS/MS improves the sensitivity of ACTH1–24 stimulation testing in pituitary patients. ...

Introduction: Maternal hypothyroidism is associated with an increased risk of complications both to the pregnant mother and the developing fetus. The 2007 American Endocrine Society Guidelines recommend a rapid titration of thyroxine dose to attain a target TSH concentration of ≤2.5 µU/mL in the 1st trimester (≤3 µU/mL in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters). Objectives Our aims were to assess the adequacy of thyroxine replacement in pregnant women with hypothyroi...

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a common endocrine disease. Many factors can lead to the onset of T2DM, however, host genetic factors and environmental factors are the focus of discussion. The aim of this study is to investigate the putative correlation between the promoter polymorphisms of interleukin-4 (IL-4), one of the immune-regulatory type 2 helper T cell cytokines, and T2DM. Genomic DNA from 425 Taiwanese T2DM patients and 148 non-diabetic control study subjects were...