Endocrine Abstracts

IntroductionUnilateral PA can be cured with unilateral adrenalectomy. Adrenal vein sampling (AVS) is the current reference test to identify unilateral PA, but it is invasive and technically-difficult. 11C-metomidate PET-CT offers a non-invasive alternative to AVS. We compared the accuracy of AVS and PET-CT in identifying patients with unilateral surgically-curable PA.MethodsIn this prospective multi-centre cl...

Background: Dexamethasone significantly improved outcomes in patients requiring supplementary oxygen and in ventilated patients with COVID-19 in the RECOVERY trial. Consequently, dexamethasone is now routinely used in these patients. However, dysglycaemia is commonly associated with steroid use and is an established risk factor for poorer outcomes in COVID-19. In this study, we aimed to elucidate the effect of dexamethasone use in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 in a real-...

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), encompasses hepatic steatosis alone (NAFL), steatohepatitis (NASH), NAFL/NASH with fibrosis and cirrhosis. Severe fibrosis and cirrhosis are associated with increased risk of morbidity and mortality (due to cardiovascular events, end-stage liver failure and cancer). Postmenopausal women are a high-risk group of patients that have worse outcomes, but the specific factors that place them at higher risk are incompletely under...

Introduction: Diabetes has been associated with poorer outcomes with COVID-19 infection, but precise predictors of mortality in patients with diabetes remain unclear. We assessed predictors of adverse outcomes in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 in Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHNT) hospitals during the first and second waves of COVID-19 to determine if outcomes for patients with diabetes have evolved with new variants and treatments.Method...

Introduction: Globally, the main cause of mortality of type 1 diabetes (T1D) is lack insulin access. There is minimal data of health outcomes for T1D in low-middle-income countries (LMICs) in South-East Asia (SEA) where government funding of insulin and blood glucose monitoring kits either do not exist or is limited. Action4Diabetes (A4D) is a non-government organisation (NGO) initiated in 2016 and supports children and young people (CYP) with T1D in five countries -Laos, Mala...

Case history: A 39 year old lady was being investigated and managed for premature ovarian insufficiency (onset aged 29y) associated with an unusual constellation of symptoms. Following normal childhood and pubertal development, she subsequently developed fatigue, multiple gastrointestinal symptoms and was underweight with evidence of weight loss, and a most recent BMI of 17 kg/m2. She had previously been reviewed due to marked absence of subcutaneous fat in the lowe...

Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease is an inherited tumour syndrome, caused by a mutation in the VHL tumour suppressor gene encoding the VHL protein. Patients are prone to cysts and neuroendocrine tumours in the pancreas and other benign and malignant neoplasms. Pancreatic cysts occur in approximately 70% of VHL patients. We describe two cases of VHL disease with extensive multi-cystic changes affecting the whole pancreas, both patients had deletions of exon 2–3 of the VHL ge...

Background: An increasingly recognized complication of Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass (RYGB) surgery is the development of postprandial hypoglycaemia (PPH). However, there remains no agreed standard on how to diagnose this condition. Commonly used tests include a prolonged oral glucose tolerance test (POGTT) and mixed meal tolerance test (MMTT). Little is known regarding how these tests compare in the post-bariatric population.Methods: Ten patients who had con...

Background: The incidence of thyroid cancer is increasing globally mainly due to increased detection of papillary microcarcinoma. The British Thyroid Association (BTA) guideline (2014) recommends the use of U1-U5 classification on ultrasound to assess thyroid cancer risk. U3 nodules have low, but indeterminate risk and therefore need FNAC. This retrospective review analyses the outcome of U3 nodules in an outer London hospital.Methods: Thyroid ultrasound...

Background: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is an endocrine disorder characterized by hyperandrogenism in women, with a high incidence of insulin resistance. Decanoic acid (DA), a naturally occurring 10-carbon fatty acid, has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and lipid profile in an in vivo model of diabetes without the induction of weight gain. However, the effects of DA on androgen production has not been explored.Aim: The objective o...