Endocrine Abstracts

In female rats, diet enriched in advanced glycation end products (AGEs) has been associated with increased serum testosterone levels and deposition of dietary glycotoxins in ovarian tissue.Women with PCOS present increased serum AGE levels, which are acutely elevated after intake of a single meal high in AGE content. In this study the effects of a hypocaloric diet and an AGE-enriched hypocaloric diet were investigated, on the endocrine and metabolic prof...

Background: Acromegaly is associated with significant excess morbidity and mortality. Surgery and radiotherapy (including radiosurgery) aim to reduce the burden of growth hormone excess while preserving normal pituitary function, but their effective deployment is dependent on high quality imaging that allows accurate localization of site(s) of active de novo or residual/recurrent disease. Despite the existence of several comprehensive guidelines on the managem...

Section 1: Case history: A 69 year old man with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was admitted with acute onset shortness of breath. A CT pulmonary angiogram revealed no focal lung abnormality but identified an incidental 40 x 32 mm left-sided adrenal lesion. An unenhanced CT, undertaken to characterise the lesion, showed a homogeneous, well-circumscribed appearance with a radiodensity of 4 Hounsfield units. Prior to involvement of the Endocrinology team, a dedicated MRI w...

Context: Surgery is the first-line treatment option for thyrotropinomas, but medical therapy with somatostatin receptor ligands (SRL) may be used as neoadjuvant treatment and to facilitate safe surgery.Objectives: To determine the extent to which neoadjuvant SRL (i) corrects clinical, laboratory and tissue hyperthyroidism in thyrotropinomas, (ii) induces tumour shrinkage in macroadenomas, and (iii) aids microadenoma detection by 11C-methionine...

Objective: To determine if an extended lateral approach to trans-sphenoidal surgery (TSS), guided by 11C-Methionine PET/CT co-registered with volumetric MRI (Met-PET/MRCR), can lead to remission in patients with persistent acromegaly due to post-operative lateral/para-sellar tumour remnants.Methods: We identified eight patients with persistent acromegaly following primary intervention [TSS ± medical therapy ± radiotherapy ...

Background: Heightened awareness, as well as frequent thyroid function testing, have contributed to a recent rise in the incidence of thyrotropinomas. Microadenomas are now increasingly being recognized. The classical textbook description of thyrotropinomas is based on historically reported features in patients who typically had large/invasive lesions. The phenotype of microTSHomas could therefore differ.Methods: We reviewed the records of all TSHomas re...

Background: Congenital, isolated, central, hypothyroidism (CCH), is rare and evades diagnosis on TSH-based congenital hypothyroidism screening programmes in the UK. Genetic ascertainment is therefore paramount in enabling prompt diagnosis and treatment of familial cases. Recognised causes include TSHB and IGSF1 gene defects, with only two previous reports of biallelic, highly disruptive (nonsense; R17X, in-frame deletion and missense; p.S115-T117del+T118), mu...

Background: Congenital, isolated, central, hypothyroidism (CCH), is rare and evades diagnosis on TSH-based congenital hypothyroidism screening programmes in the UK. Genetic ascertainment is therefore paramount in enabling prompt diagnosis and treatment of familial cases. Recognised causes include TSHB and IGSF1 gene defects, with only two previous reports of biallelic, highly disruptive (nonsense; R17X, in-frame deletion and missense; p.S115-T117del+T118), mu...

Background: Adrenal vein sampling (AVS) remains the gold-standard for distinguishing unilateral and bilateral disease in primary aldosteronism (PA). However, it is invasive, technically demanding, and may yield inconclusive or equivocal results. 11C-Metomidate PET-CT (11C-MTO-PET-CT) is a non-invasive alternative to AVS for localising unilateral aldosterone-producing adenomas (APAs).Methods/patients: We report a retrospective analys...

Background: Endocrine Society guidelines classify macroprolactinomas as ‘resistant’ if there is failure to normalise prolactin, or to achieve radiological tumour shrinkage of >50%, on standard doses of dopamine agonist. In this context, escalation of treatment to maximal tolerable doses and/or referral for surgery is advised. However, we have recently observed several ‘discordant responders’, where tumour shrinkage lags significantly (>6 months) beh...