Endocrine Abstracts

According to the original definition, pheromones are substances released by an individual that have definite behavioural or physiological effects on another individual of the same species. For example, male mouse urine contains a complex mixture of chemosignals, some of which, such as brevicomin and thiazole are testosterone-dependent and signal the presence of a reproductively active male. These have powerful effects as releaser pheromones to elicit aggression from other male...

Hypercalcaemia is the commonest endocrine complication of malignant disease. In most cases the underlying cause is a combination of excessive bone resorption and increased tubular reabsorption of calcium brought about by the effect of the onco-feto protein parathyroid hormone related protein (PTHrP). Other causes of hypercalcaemia of malignancy include direct interaction of malignant cells with bone; this is most commonly seen with haematological malignancies where there is st...

Previous studies demonstrate unexpectly high human fat cell turnover. About 10% of the total peripheral fat cell pool is renewed every year. In relative terms this turnover is two-fold increased in obesity but reduced in subjects with pernicious adipose morphology (few but large fat cells). High turnover necessitates a renewable source of adipocyte precursors. Two independent studies, using bone marrow transplanted patients as model, demonstrated important contribution of bone...

The discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs) as the endogenous mediators of RNA interference was a major event in contemporary biomedical research. miRNAs were shown to be involved in the regulation of gene expression affecting several basic physiological and pathological processes as parts of the epigenetic machinery. Differential expression of tissue miRNAs were described in several diseases including tumours. In tumours, up- and down-regulated miRNAs can be classified as oncogenes o...

Background: Endogenous Cushing’s syndrome (CS) comprises the symptoms and signs associated with prolonged exposition to inappropriately high levels of glucocorticoids produced by adrenal cortex. Epidemiological studies reported an incidence of 0.7–2.4 cases per 1 million inhabitants per year. Late-night salivary cortisol (LNSC) is one of three currently recommended initial screening tests for CS. The advantages of LNSC are nonivasive specimen collection and minimal i...

Background: The presence of functional ACTH receptors (MC2R) on osteoblasts and fact, that their activation lead to the proliferation of osteoblasts is consistent with the presence of receptors for another anterior pituitary hormones (FSH and TSH) on bone cells. Does ACTH directly regulate bone? Is it possible, that this is another hormone of a novel regulatory axis, pituitary-bone axis, in which hormones bypass traditional endocrine targets to regulate bone mass directly? Sup...

Backrgound: Coexistent gastrointestinal pathology might alter hydrocortisone (HCT) and levothyroxine (LT4) absorption and gut transit times.Aims: To screen patients with autoimmune Addison disease for the presence of serological markers of autoimmune gastrointestinal disorders, to compare doses of HCT and LT4 in patients with positive autoantibodies to those of patients without signs of autoimmune gastroenteropathy.Subjects and met...

We would like to present the case of a twenty-six year old gentleman whose first presentation to hospital was aged 4 days old. At that time he was thought to be generally unwell with poor feeding and excessively somnolent. During his resuscitation he was found to have extremely deranged serum electrolytes with sodium 122 mmol/l and potassium 14 mmol/l. His electrocardiogram (ECG) was initially noted to be bizarre, with no clear rhythm. After resuscitation with IV fluid, glucos...

Background: Osteoporosis is a systemic skeletal disease characterized by low bone mass, microarchitectural deterioration of bone tissue, and the consequence of an increased fracture risk. The term “artificial intelligence (AI)” denotes a field in computer science which enables computers to simulate different aspects of human intelligence, such as natural language understanding, pattern recognition or data driven learning. Machine Learning is a subset of AI, and withi...

Introduction: The use of Closed Loop (CL) system has slowly progressed from using a short time overnight to prolonged periods under everyday living conditions. In the last few years, Do-It-Yourself Closed Loop (DIY-CL) technology has become openly available as part of ‘patient-led’ global initiative (#Wearenotwaiting) outside the conventional regulatory pathways, raising many medico-legal and ethical dilemmas.Methods: Majority of the DIY-CL use...