Endocrine Abstracts

Section 1: Case history: A 68 year old lady presented with a 2 week history of pedal swelling, with large blisters appearing on her feet. Her past medical history included adrenal Cushing”s treated with a right laparoscopic adrenalectomy on a 4.7x5.2 cm lipid poor adenoma 12 years previously; she had been discharged 7 years ago after repeated normal overnight dexamethasone suppression tests. Over the last year she had gained 12 kg in weight and been diagnosed with type 2 ...

Section 1: Case history: A sixty-three-year-old Caucasian male presented with a six-week history of lethargy, emotional lability, polydipsia, polyuria, increased appetite and weight gain. He also reported changes in his facial features and widening of the gaps between his teeth. He has a background of hypertension, obstructive sleep apnoea and benign prostatic hyperplasia. On examination, the patient appeared plethoric, had coarsened facial features, mild prognathism and evide...

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) increases fetal morbidity/mortality, and is associated with elevated risks of offspring cardiometabolic disease. These risks are compounded in infants born large for gestational age (LGA) rather than appropriate size (AGA), a common complication of GDM associated with altered placental function. Circulating extracellular vesicle (EV)-associated miRNAs are internalised into the placenta and are emerging as key GDM mediators, with their role i...

Background: Acromegaly is rarely encountered in pregnancy and the lack of data for clinical outcomes limits the development of evidence-based guidelines. We present the case of a pregnancy in a 31-year-old woman with acromegaly due to a pituitary microadenoma.Clinical case: The patient underwent trans-sphenoidal hypophysectomy in 2015 at the age of 28, which was non-curative: post-operative IGF-1 was 533 mcg/l (72–259 mcg/l) (down from 894 mcg/l pre...

Gestational diabetes (GDM) is a form of diabetes that is first diagnosed during pregnancy, complicating 8–24% of all pregnancies. Despite treatment, substantial numbers of babies are born large for gestational age (LGA), predisposing them to cardio-metabolic disease in adulthood. It is difficult to predict which pregnancies are most at risk. The study aimed to determine if circulating maternal serum small extracellular vesicle (sEV) miRNAs have the potential to predict al...

Case history: A 26 year-old lady was admitted directly from the endocrine clinic with severe hypertension (BP 180/130 mmHg) and bilateral papilloedema. Six weeks prior to admission she had undergone resection of a 24 cm right upper quadrant lesion that was pre-operatively felt to be of hepatic origin. She was normotensive pre-operatively. Histology confirmed this to be an adrenal phaeochromocytoma with deficient SDH immunostaining. Pre-operative biochemical assessment had not ...

Introduction: Measurement of microRNA (miRNA) in aldosterone-producing adenoma (APA) tissue from primary aldosteronism (PA) patients show levels of the miR24-1 cluster miRNAs (i.e. miRNAs 24-1, 27b and 23b) are significantly reduced relative to normal adrenal tissue. Our previous studies also show that miRNA-24 directly targets CYP11B2 (aldosterone synthase) gene expression. Circulating miRNAs released into the bloodstream may be diagnostic biomarkers or signalling mo...

Background & Aims: ATP binding cassette subfamily G1 (ABCG1) is involved in mediating cholesterol efflux and modulating cellular lipid homeostasis. It is influenced by endogenous glucose and our aim was to examine the relationship between ABCG1 expression and lipid profiles within the increased glucose levels of subjects with Type 2 diabetes (ODM).Methods: RNA was extracted from visceral fat collected from subjects undergoing abdominal surgery (baria...

Approximately 10% of essential hypertension cases is attributed to primary aldosteronism (PA), where inappropriately high levels of aldosterone are secreted. Almost half of these PA cases result from aldosterone-producing adenoma. microRNAs are single-stranded, short non-coding RNAs that negatively regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally. In a previous study, we showed that microRNAs directly modulate CYP11B2 (aldosterone synthase) gene expression and aldoster...

Background: Guidelines from ATA and the Endocrine society suggest the use of fetal thyroid monitoring in maternal Graves’ disease to detect fetal thyrotoxicosis or hypothyroidism in response to maternal thyroid receptor antibodies (TRAb) or thionamide therapy respectively. The literature examining how effective this policy is remains sparse, since these remain unusual clinical situations for most centres. Here we review our experience of scanning for fetal goitre.<p c...