Endocrine Abstracts

Professor Jonathan R Seckl, UK AbstractThis prestigious prize is intended for established workers in the field of basic and clinical neuroendocrinology and is generously supported by Ipsen. This year’s recipient is Professor Jonathan R Seckl. The prize will be presented as part of the ICE/ECE 2012 opening ceremony where Prof. Seckl will deliver his lecture. Prof. Seckl will also deliver two other l...

The management of aggressive pituitary tumours is challenging. These tumours are typically resistant to standard medical therapy and progressive tumour growth occurs despite multiple operations and radiotherapy. Chemotherapy has been reserved as salvage therapy, although historically results are often disappointing. However temozolomide, an oral alkylating agent, has recently demonstrated significant activity against these tumours. Over the past 6 years, growing international ...

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus is one of the main public health issues. It is becoming a world pandemic. Type 2 diabetes appears to involve interaction between susceptible genetic backgrounds and environmental factors. It’s important to identify modifiable risk factors that may help reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. For the meantime no data in scientific literature or eating speed could influence on the risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus. Therefore the aim of ...

Chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis, also known as Hashimoto thyroiditis, is the most frequent type of thyroiditis. An average 2% of the population suffer from the disease. The incidence of the disease is estimated as 0.3–1.5/1000 people a year.The main cause of the disease includes autoimmune disorders, that result in increased risk of diabetes type 1. Furthermore, during the course of Hashimoto thyroiditis, hypothyroidism may originate carbohydrate me...

Autophagy is a catabolic process that promotes hepatic cell survival during starvation and metabolic stress. Currently, little is known about the endocrine regulation of autophagy. Recent studies by Singh et al. (Nature 458, 1131–1135 (2009)) showed a critical link between autophagy and beta oxidation in hepatocytes. Accordingly, we examined whether hormones known to promote beta oxidation of fatty acids also stimulated autophagy in hepatic cells. Surprisingly, we found t...

The recommended amount of administered radioiodine activity needed to successfully ablate thyroid remnants after total thyroidectomy is controversial. We compared the efficacy of 50mCi and 100mCi radioactive iodine for thyroid remnant ablation among patients with low stage and low to intermediate risk differentiated thyroid cancer who underwent total thyroidectomy through a retrospective cohort study in a tertiary multi-specialty referral center located in Quezon City, Philipp...

The glycoprotein hormone, TSH, is synthesized and secreted by thyrotrophs in the anterior pituitary gland. It acts at the TSH receptor (TSHR), a 7-transmembrane G-protein coupled cell membrane receptor expressed in thyroid follicular cells. The TSHR, thus, plays a key role in the regulation of thyroid status and growth of the thyroid gland. In recent years TSHR expression has also been identified in a wide variety of extra-thyroidal tissues including: anterior pituitary; hypot...

Objective: Catch-up growth might be associated with metabolic risk later in life. The β-cell has a higher energy requirement and poor antioxidant defense. The accelerator hypothesis predicts earlier onset in heavier people, without necessarily a change in risk, and views diabetes as the one disorder of insulin resistance, set against different genetic backgrounds. Insulin resistance is a function of fat mass, and increasing body weight is accompanied by earlier presentati...

E R Simpson, Prince Henry's Institute, Clayton, Victoria, Australia. AbstractDr Evan Simpson is a native of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has had a long interest in the basic biology of estrogen biosynthesis, especially its relationship to breast cancer.His group was the first to clone and characterize the aromatase gene and to show the unique use of tissue-specific promoters to regulate tissue-specif...

Hypothyroidism delays bone formation, whilst thyrotoxicosis accelerates skeletal development but is a risk factor for osteoporosis. We characterized mice with mutation or deletion of T3 receptors, TRα and TRβ, in several genetic backgrounds. Delayed ossification and growth retardation were observed in TRα mutants, whereas TRβ mutants had advanced bone age. Adult TRα mutants had high bone mass, whereas TRβ mutants were osteoporotic. Targ...