Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The prevalence of obesity and metabolic disturbances is worryingly increasing worldwide, therefore the study of their pathophysiology is extremely important to find new strategies for their treatment. Obesity has an impact not only on the metabolism of the patients, but also profoundly influence their daily life, and potentially affect the quality of life and the quality of sleep. These latter are strictly related to the circadian rhythm of the individuals that, ...

Introduction: Distal renal tubular acidosis (RTA) can have varied presentation. Onset in infancy is usually severe. However, adolescent onset has variable presentation ranging from hypokalemia to nephrocalcinosis, and rarely with rickets or growth retardation. We describe a girl with distal RTA presenting with hypokalemia and growth retardation.Case: 12 year old girl presented with recurrent episodes of weakness of all four limbs and failure to gain heig...

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are steroid hormones used to treat inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, but their clinical efficacy is hampered by development of side effects such as impaired wound healing. GCs bind the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) to mediate cellular effects. The inactive GR is held in multi-protein complex in the cytoplasm and upon ligand binding undergoes a conformational change, interacts with cytoplasmic enzymes to mediate non-genomic effects (within...

Background: One percent of the adult population are, at any one time, prescribed oral glucocorticoids (GC). GCs are known to be associated with hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis suppression. However, there remains uncertainty regarding: i) the prevalence of GC-induced adrenal insufficiency (AI); ii) the effects of GC dose and duration; and iii) the time course of adrenal recovery and how GCs should be withdrawn. We undertook a systematic literature review to addres...

Thyroid cancer is the most prevalent cancer among endocrine malignancies. In clinically, surgical resection combined with radioactive iodine therapy has been proved effective in treating differentiated thyroid cancer, including papillary and follicular thyroid cancers (FTC). However, patients with incurable differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC), poorly differentiated thyroid cancer (PDTC) and anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) exhibit worse prognosis. Therefore, a novel and effecti...

Introduction: We report a patient who presented with presumed intestinal obstruction, and was subsequently diagnosed with an adrenal phaeochromocytoma associated with venous thromboembolism. We review the literature and discuss underlying mechanisms for these uncommon manifestations.Case presentation: A 56-year-old man with background untreated hypertension presented with abdominal distension, vomiting, breathlessness and haemoptysis. Heart rate (HR) was...

Thyroid cancer is the most prevalent cancer among endocrine malignancies. Surgical resection combined with radioactive iodine therapy has been proved effective in treating differentiated thyroid cancer, including papillary and follicular thyroid cancers (FTC). However, patients with incurable differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC), poorly differentiated thyroid cancer (PDTC) and anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) exhibit worse prognosis. Therefore, a novel and effective treatment is...

Variation in glucocorticoid (Gc) sensitivity underlies metabolic disease, and affects therapeutic response in inflammation. Using an in-vitro screening approach we identify two new mechanisms capable of regulating Gc sensitivity.The first involves interferon induced factor 16 (IFI16). IFI16 potentiated both transactivation, and Gc repression of NFκB. IFI16 did not affect glucocorticoid receptor (GR) expression, ligand dependent repression of GR expr...

Background: According to western literature aerobic Gram-positive cocci are the predominant microorganisms that are isolated from diabetic foot ulcers. In contrast, whatever limited data is available from India Gram-negative aerobic bacteria were most frequently isolated.Aims and objectives: To know the clinical and microbiological profile of patients with infected diabetic foot ulcers.Patients and methods: A descriptive cross-sect...

Glucocorticoids act through the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) to regulate cell function. GR gamma (GRγ) is a constitutive exon3/4 splice variant, contributing 4–8% of the total GR transcripts and is highly conserved through mammalian evolution, but its biological function remains unknown. Using microarray analysis we identified the transcriptome response for GRγ in stable HEK-Flp cells. This revealed that although GRγ effectively modulated gene expression in...