Endocrine Abstracts

The management of childhood obesity has evolved from hospital led treatment to community-based programmes. This is an audit reviewing the impact of the active children eating smart (ACES) programme for overweight/obese children on the dietetic department in the Royal Hospital for Sick Children; Glasgow. A retrospective audit was carried out of referrals to the dietetic department. Clinic lists for dietetic appointments in 2008 and 2010 were identified and reviewed. In 2008 and...

Introduction: It is believed that key pathogenic mechanism of PCOS is hyperinsulinemia. Insulin synthesis is linked to C-peptide release, but the role of C-peptide in PCOS remains unknown.Methods: The aim of this study was to evaluate of C-peptide serum levels in obese women with PCOS with concomitant assessment of possible link between C-peptide concentrations and metabolic disturbances and androgens levels in those individuals.Si...

Endogenous hypercortisolism and chronic glucocorticoid (GC) therapy reduce bone mass, increase central fat mass, alter adipokines and enhance cardiovascular risk. Surgery (pituitary, adrenal or for ectopic ACTH) can control hypercortisolism in 90% of patients in experienced hands, and is often followed by inhibition of the adrenal axis, requiring substitution therapy with GC for months or years. We have been interested in learning on long-term outcome of ‘cured’ CS p...

Objectives: Autoimmune diseases are typically studied with a focus on the immune system, and less attention is paid to responses of target tissues exposed to the immune assault. We aimed to evaluate, based on available bulk RNA sequencing data, whether inflammation induces similar molecular signatures in the target tissues of five autoimmune diseases, namely type 1 diabetes (T1D), Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), multiple sclerosis (MS) and systemi...

Epidermal growth factor (EGF) and heregulin (HRG) act via ErbB receptors, to stimulate Akt and ERK. These drive breast cancer cell proliferation and the network is targeted in cancer therapy (1). Single cell responses show marked cell-cell variation and information theory provides statistical measures that take the effect this noise has on information transfer into account (2). Here we quantify the mutual information (MI) between stimulus concentration and effects in MCF7 cell...

Thyroid hormones increase foetal and adult metabolic rates, and, in adult tissues, increase mitochondrial biogenesis. Foetal tri-iodothyronine (T3) concentrations rise towards term in preparation for the increased postnatal energy demands but whether they affect mitochondrial development remains unknown. This study examined mitochondrial development in skeletal muscle of thyroid hormone deficient sheep foetuses near term.At 105–110 days (...

Introduction: The proto-oncogene KIT (CD117) is widely expressed in neoplastic tissues. Gain-of-function mutations of the KIT gene were found in some types of leukaemia, gastrointestinal stromal tumours, germinal cell tumours and rarely in other malignancies. Studies on the KIT protein and gene in different tumours have been intensified by the availability of imatinibe mesylate, KIT/PDGFRA inhibitor.Methods: We have immunohistochemically investiga...

Context: In population and psychosocial studies, saliva becomes increasingly popular, mainly due to its non-invasive collection methods and availability of free hormone fractions. However, few studies have evaluated the impact of collection devices on steroid hormone analysis; and none with the currently used methods.Objective: The aim of this pilot study was to minimize pre-analytical errors based on sample collection methods.Meth...

Introduction: Thyroid disorders affect body composition; however, few studies have addressed the effect of variation of thyroid hormone status within the euthyroid range on body composition. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between indices of thyroid status and body composition in a population of euthyroid men.Methods: Healthy male siblings (n=677, 25–45 years, mean BMI 25.2) were recruited in a cross-sectional, population-based st...

Introduction: Severe hypocalcemia is a life threatening condition, usually symptomatic with cardiovascular and neuromuscular manifestations. Varying clinical presentations and concomitant infections, however, might obscure the right diagnosis, delaying early treatment.Case: A 51-year-old African male presents himself at the emergency department (ED) with complaints of a soar throat, a productive cough and a striking pinched voice. Investigation revealed ...