Endocrine Abstracts

Case history: Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome (BHDS) is a rare autosomal dominant disorder caused by heterozygous pathogenic variants in the FLCN gene encoding folliculin on chromosome 17p11, first described clinically in 1975. It is a ‘hamartomatous’ disorder usually manifesting with pulmonary cysts, benign cutaneous tumours and conferring a high risk of renal malignancy. A 43 year old man had a 34 x 22 mm right adrenal nodule discov...

Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPTH) is a common endocrine disorder and it is estimated that 10% of cases are hereditary, related to syndromes including; multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN) type 1, MEN type 4, MEN2A and hereditary hyperparathyroidism jaw tumour syndrome. Further hereditary cases can occur in the absence of syndromic features such as familial hypercalcemia hypocalcuria. Identifying cases of hereditary PHPTH enables a personalised medicine approach. Current guidel...

Previously, we reported that aphidicolin acutely increases nitric oxide (NO) production in bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAECs) by increasing phosphorylation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase at serine 1179 (p-eNOS-Ser1179) and decreasing phosphorylation at serine 116 (p-eNOS-Ser116) without altering eNOS protein expression. Here, we demonstrate that prolonged treatment with aphidicolin (over 24 h) also increased NO production in BAECs. Unlike the a...

The cytosolic calcium concentration is regulated by calcium-processing proteins such as transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 5 (TRPV5), TRPV6, sodium-calcium exchanger 1 (NCX1) and plasma membrane Ca2+ ATPase 1 (PMCA1). Those calcium-processing proteins are important for physiological functions in the brain. The effects of steroid hormones on calcium-processing protein expressions in the brains are undescribed. Thus, the effects of steroid ...

Background: The National Health Insurance Service of South Korea is considered to be one of the most effective systems in the world with high accessibility to health care for all Koreans including foreign residents in the country as many as 50 M people. The accumulative information on the behaviors and the statistics of healthcare use based on the National Health Insurance Sharing Service Database has become important for medical research as a nationwide surveillance.<p cl...

Background: There are several markers of renal function such as estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) calculated by serum creatinine and cystatin C and urinary albumin-creatinine excretion ratio (ACR). Recently, a few studies showed relationships between markers of renal function and carotid arterty intima-media thickness (IMT), but the results were inconsistent. The aim of this study is to compare serum cystatin C as risk factors for atherosclerosis in Korean type 2 diab...

Introduction: Trials on children and adolescents with excess weight are limited and lack parathyroid hormone (PTH) measures as a surrogate marker of vitaminD status in skeletal health. The present study addresses this key knowledge gap with the use of a dose-response randomized clinical trial (RCT) aimed at determining vitamin D requirement to increase 25(OH)D and suppress PTH concentrations in overweight and obese school children.Methods: The current st...

The embryoid body test (EBT) is a developmental toxicity test method that assesses the half inhibitory concentrations of substances in the area of embryoid bodies (EBs), and in the viability of mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and fibroblasts (3T3 cells). In the previous pre-validation study evaluated the predictive accuracy of the EBT using 26 coded test substances and highly accurate (above 80%) when substances were classified using the predictive model. EBT used two same e...

Introduction: Hypoxia-inducible factors (HIF) are the key transcription factor induced by hypoxic condition, which regulate expression of specific target genes including angiogenic factors, erythropoietin, glucose transporters, and glycolytic enzymes. Recently, many studies connected to intracellular calcium levels and regulation of HIF-1α protein level. Calbindin-D9k is a cytosolic calcium-binding protein and compensate with other calcium transporter protein f...

Introduction: Calbindin-D9k (CaBP-9k), which is a calcium ion buffering and transporter gene, is known to be regulated by the vitamin D and steroid hormones, and is mainly expressed in mammalian intestine, kidney and uterus. However, CaBP-9k expression in lung has not been studied. Maintaining lung structure using pulmonary surfactant is important for pulmonary gas exchange. Steroids are known to accelerate maturation of the fetal lung and secretion of surfactant. Otherwise th...