Endocrine Abstracts

Testosterone reduces myocardial ischaemia in men with coronary artery disease (CAD) and improves symptoms and exercise capacity in men with congestive heart failure (CHF), effects proposed to be due to testosterone-induced vasodilatation. Isolated vessel studies suggest this occurs via a calcium antagonistic action upon voltage-gated Ca2+ channels but this has yet to be investigated directly.We therefore employed patch clamp methodology to stu...

Low serum testosterone levels in men predict the future development of insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, men with Type 2 diabetes have lower testosterone levels than nondiabetic men. Testosterone is known to be positively correlated with insulin sensitivity. It has also been demonstrated that low levels of circulating androgens are associated with coronary artery disease, dyslipidaemia, hypertension and visceral obesity. The purpose of this study was to dete...

Evidence supports a protective role for testosterone in men with coronary artery disease (CAD) and in the regulation of cytokine function. This study examined the relationship between serum levels of inflammatory cytokines and testosterone in men with CAD. Serum was collected from 69 men (59+1 years) having >75% occlusion of 1 (n=20), 2 (n=18) or 3 (n=31) coronary arteries. Levels of total testosterone (TT), bioavailable testosterone (BT), tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNFa...

Testosterone therapy has been shown to benefit men with heart failure or coronary artery disease, an activity proposed to be mediated via its vasodilatory efficacy. Testosterone has been demonstrated to dilate human coronary arteries, but it is unknown whether testosterone has a similar action in human pulmonary or systemic vessels.Male patients were recruited from cardiothoracic (n = 14, age = 68 plus/minus 9) or gastrointestinal (n = 8, age = 70 plus/minus 3) operating l...

We report two ladies who presented with thyroid dysfunction associated with neck swelling. In both cases within ten days of consultation they developed rapid enlargement of their mass associated with marked swelling of an arm.Case 1. A 63 year old lady developed sudden onset of a thyroid swelling associated with a new diagnosis of primary hypothyroidism . She had lost weight and felt tired. On examination she had a moderately enlarged woody goitre, there was no associated ...

BackgroundHeart failure is a syndrome of vaso-constriction and hormone abnormalities. There is an excess of catabolic and vasoconstrictor hormones and a relative deficiency of anabolic hormones. Vaso-dilating drugs improve symptoms in heart failure and inhibition of some catabolic / vasoconstrictor hormones improves prognosis. We aimed to study the direct vascular effects of testosterone resistance arteries from men with heart failure.Methods6 resistance arteries w...

Background. Males with coronary disease have lower levels of endogenous testosterone than unaffected males. It is not known if low testosterone is a cause, effect or an epi-phenomenon of ischaemic heart disease.We hypothesised that androgen deficient men treated surgically with complete resolution of their symptoms would have a higher subsequent testosterone than men with persistent angina.Methods. Subjects were recruited after angiography. All subjects were biochemically ...

Background: Testosterone treatment has been shown to increase exercise capacity in men with chronic heart failure but the mechanism of benefit is unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the acute haemodyamic effects of testosterone in men with heart failure.Methods: Twelve men with stable heart failure (age 62.8 (8.8)years; ejection fraction 30.9 (6.3)% (NR>60%)) were enrolled in a double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over study. Cardiac o...

Leptin is known to be produced by human pituitary adenomas, and inhibits the proliferation of HP75 cells in vitro. The HP75 cell line is derived from gonadotroph tumour cells from a clinically non-functioning human pituitary adenoma transfected with SV40. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of interleukins (IL) IL1-alpha and IL-6 on growth of HP75 cells and their effects on the growth inhibitory actions of leptin.HP75 cells were plated in 2...

BACKGROUND: We have previously shown that men with coronary artery disease (CAD) have lower serum bioavailable testosterone levels than men with normal coronary arteries and this may have detrimental effects in coronary disease. It has been suggested that low androgen levels in men with CAD could be accounted for by the high prevalence of statin therapy and other factors such as smoking. We investigated the effects of statin therapy and smoking on testosterone in men with CAD....