Endocrine Abstracts

Case history: A 58 year old woman presented to her GP when her family members noted prominence of her left eye. She had a background history of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Her main symptom of PCOS was hirsutism. She had been treated initially with the combined oral contraceptive pill ‘Dianette’ (ethinyloestradiol/cyproterone) but had also been treated intermittently with varying doses of 25–100 mg cyproterone acetate (CPA) 10 days/cycle. Post menopause she...

Current guidance recommends replacing vitamin D in patients with mild primary hyperparathyroidism although there are reports of worsening hypercalcaemia in some patients. Vitamin D replacement has also been known to cause hypercalcaemia in patients with sarcoidosis. We present a case of a patient with co-existent sarcoidosis and primary hyperparathyroidism, who developed severe hypercalcaemia following treatment with high dose Vitamin D.A 63 year old lad...

Turner’s syndrome (TS) results from a genetic abnormality in phenotypical female individuals where the second X chromosome is either absent or present in a mosaic form. The most obvious consequences are short stature and primary amenorrhoea, although there are often dysmorphic features as well as cardiovascular and genitourinary complications. 90% of TS patients experience primary amenorrhoea with subsequent infertility. Spontaneous recovery of ovarian function in patient...

Background: Structured education should be appropriate to the learning styles of participants. Health professionals and experts in education worked together to develop KICk-OFF for 11–16 year olds and similar experience has now been used in the development of Junior KICk-OFF for Key Stage (KS) 1 (4–7 years) and KS2 (7–11 years).Method: The KICk-OFF team developed the curricula with input from teachers and an academic educationalist. Sectio...

Background: Estimates for the prevalence of SHOX mutation in children with short stature vary from 2 to 15%. Unless specific clinical and radiological signs are sought these patients can be misdiagnosed as idiopathic short stature. An evidence based clinical scoring system has been published to identify these patients; more recently characteristic radiological signs have also been identified in bone age X-rays. To our knowledge there has not been a survey in the UK ev...

A 36-year-old, previously healthy, man presented with several weeks’ history of gradually worsening headache. He attended A&E after he was woken by sudden worsening of the headache, associated with vomiting and pre-syncopal symptoms. Investigations revealed severe hyponatraemia - serum Na 109 mmol/L. He was also severely hypocortisolaemic – serum cortisol (random) 16 nmol/L, ACTH 19 ng/L. Cranial imaging revealed a 17 mm suprasellar, complex cystic pituitary lesi...

Introduction: We present the case of a clinically functioning gonadotroph adenoma in a pre-menopausal woman with abdominal pain, bilateral multi-cystic ovaries and fibromatosis. To our knowledge, this is the first case of fibromatosis associated with a functioning gonadotroph adenoma.Case: A 36 year old female presented on three occasions with acute abdominal pain. She was previously well and had two normal pregnancies. On the first admission, she underw...

Background: Maternal obesity in pregnancy associates with higher birthweight. A key pathway is through placental regulation of hormones controlling foetal growth. As excess foetal glucocorticoid exposure associates with lower birthweight and since placental Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF2) may be modulated by glucocorticoids, we hypothesised that the expression profiles of placental genes leading to reduced glucocorticoid exposure and increased IGF2 mRNA level correlate with ...

Introduction: Maternal distress, including poorer life satisfaction, increased anxiety and depression (A&D) symptoms, are worse in Severely Obese (SO) than lean pregnancy and may alter placental genes regulating foetal glucocorticoid exposure and placental growth. We hypothesised that the associations between increased maternal distress with changes in placental mRNA levels leading to a reduced placental barrier to maternal glucocorticoids, and altered placental IGF2, are ...

Introduction: Hyperprolactinaemia may occur in 30% of adults with chronic kidney disease (CKD), although rare in paediatrics. The pathophysiology might be further complicated by pre-existing pituitary abnormalities.Case: Symptomatic hyperprolactinaemia developed in this adolescent girl with CKD and hypopituitarism. History involved neonatal hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) and renal cortical necrosis. CKD Stage 3 ensued. Growth declined by 2.3 year...