Endocrine Abstracts

A 36-year-old gentleman presented to his GP 2 years ago with hypertension and was commenced on valsartan. In January 2008, he was noted to have mildly deranged LFT and abdominal ultrasound scan showed mild fatty liver infiltration and bilateral renal stones. He was referred to Urology for investigation of renal stones and a CT IVU showed multiple renal calculi, a 6×5×5 cm soft tissue enhancing lesion arising from the right adrenal gland and a 7 mm calcified density w...

A 27-year-old woman presented with a 6-week history of weight loss, excessive thirst, nocturia and lethargy. She had no significant past medical or family history. At presentation she was unwell, tachycardic and had a blood pressure of 174/100 mm Hg. Physical examination was otherwise unremarkable. Her urine dipstick was strongly positive for glucose and ketones. The plasma glucose was 21.7 mmols/l. An arterial blood gas showed a pH of 7.35 and bicarbonates of 23. She was trea...

Male prolactinomas are rare and considered as bad responders to medical treatment compared to female cases. Our aim was to evaluate response of pituitary macrolesions secreting prolactin (PRL) to dopamine agonists. Our population was composed of 34 men (mean age =36.6 years) with a diagnosis of macroprolactinomas: mean tumor size =35.5 mm (12 – 118) and mean PRL =2505 ng/ml (132 – 19996). Bromocriptine was used with a mean dose of 22.94 mg/day (3.75 – 80) and a ...

This study was designed to investigate effects of raloxifene treatment on serum interleukin (IL)-4 and transforming growth factor-beta (TGFbeta)1 concentrations in healthy postmenopausal women. The study was approved by the local ethics committee. Thirty five women were enrolled into this study and randomly divided in two groups. While 16 women were included in raloxifene group, control group was comprised of remaining 19 women. The study group continuously received 60 mg ralo...

A 71 year old obese lady was noticed to have acromegalic facies and bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome, increasing ring and shoe size, but no sweats or headaches. Random IGF-1 was raised (39.1nanomol per litre). Following oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) fasting glucose was normal but impaired at 2hours (4.8 and 9.6millimol per litre respectively), growth hormone (GH) suppressed from a baseline of 3.8microunits per litre to 2.2microunits per litre. Following thyrotropin releas...

Short stature in thalassemia major: multiple aetiologies.A 24 year old Asian male with beta-thalassemia major was referred with symptoms of tiredness, weight gain, muscle weakness and depression. He had been treated elsewhere with blood transfusions, desferrioxamine and had undergone a splenectomy. He was known to have underlying cardiac dysfunction and was diagnosed to have hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism at the age of 17 years and primary hypothyroidism...

Case: A GP with autoimmune hypothyroidism presented with a phaeochromocytoma during labour at the age of 36 y. A left adrenalectomy confirmed the diagnosis and a basal cell carcinoma was also removed. She had a history of Dupuytren's lesions of both soles and palms starting in her teenage years and multiple keratosis. There was no family history of any endocrine or skin disorder. At 41y, a benign breast lump was removed and also a gastrointestinal spindle cell stromal tumour (...

Case: A GP with autoimmune hypothyroidism presented with a phaeochromocytoma during labour at the age of 36 y. A left adrenalectomy confirmed the diagnosis and a basal cell carcinoma was also removed. She had a history of Dupuytren's lesions of both soles and palms starting in her teenage years and multiple keratosis. There was no family history of any endocrine or skin disorder. At 41y, a benign breast lump was removed and also a gastrointestinal spindle cell stromal tumour (...

An ovo-testis (a gonad showing aspects of both ovarian and testicular function) occurs in some 60% of true hermaphrodites. They may be located in the labio-scrotal folds, inguinal canal or abdomen and are often removed prior to or shortly after the onset of puberty. Though the potential for ovulatory function within such a gonad is acknowledged, it is rarely witnessed and there are few detailed descriptions of the phenomenon. We describe serial observations of this process in ...

ApoB isoforms are components of the chylomicron, and of the atherogenic LDL and Lp(a) particles. Ex26 is exceptionally long at 7.57kb as most exons are <500bp. Ex26 is also the site of RNA editing, which generates the ApoB48 isoform instead of ApoB100. The first 3kb of ex26 contains 15 sequences matching the splice site consensus, which could be used in splicing, but are not. Splice sites matching the consensus but which are not used are called pseudosites. How the spliceos...