Endocrine Abstracts

Case history: A 50 year old female presented with diarrhoea, facial rash and hyponatraemia. In addition, she described a 3 week history of headaches, malaise, intermittent joint pain and swelling. On examination, the patient was noted to have a malar rash and over the subsequent 2–3 days began to develop necrotic patches on both ears. She had no evidence of cutaneous pigmentation. She took no regular medication, other than dabigatran. Past medical history of note included...

Introduction: Obesity is a complex and multifactorial disease with a chronic and relapsing nature, and is associated with over 200 co-morbidities. In a minority of patients, the obesity is caused by gene defects in the leptin-melanocortin pathway. As lifestyle interventions often fail in these patients, additional anti-obesity pharmacotherapy is needed. In this case report, we describe the therapeutic journey of a patient with early-onset obesity and hyperphagia due to heteroz...

Introduction: In thyrotoxicosis, the clinical syndrome of excess circulating thyroid hormones, differentiation must be made between thyrotoxicosis with increased or decreased radio-iodine tracer uptake on thyroid scintigraphy. A cause of thyrotoxicosis with decreased radio-iodine uptake is iodine excess. In patients not taking any medication and without any history of recent radiological imaging studies, the confirmation of iodine excess as the cause of the thyrotoxicosis is d...

Background and aims: Research indicates that a significant portion of transgender women are involved in sex work, which is mostly attributed to discrimination of transgender persons on the labour market. Transition-related health risk behaviour, such as uncontrolled hormone use, auto-medication and the use of silicone injections, may lead to several adverse health outcomes for transgender persons. Transgender sex workers are a vulnerable group within the transgender population...

A 26-year-old Chinese male with autism spectrum disorder and mental retardation, was referred to start insulin therapy for uncontrolled diabetes mellitus (DM) (HbA1c: 9%; C-peptide: 1.75 ng/ml; anti-GAD AB: negative) treated with oral antidiabetic drugs since 2012.Clinical examination revealed a tall man with overweight and truncal obesity in light of his ethnicity. We withheld facial dysmorphism with hypertelorism, scarce facial hair, and clinodactyly. ...

A 57-year-old woman presented with a 4-week history of lethargy, weight loss, polyuria, and polydipsia. Her only past medical history of note was hypertension for which she was taking lisinopril. On admission her initial investigations showed: glucose 22.6 mmol/l, capillary blood ketones Hi and a metabolic acidosis (H+57.5 nmol/l and HCO3− 13.7 mmol/l). She was commenced on the DKA protocol and her acidosis resolved without complication. She was maintained on ...

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is an aggressive cancer, with, in its advanced stages, a median 5-year survival rate of less than 15%. ACC is rare in humans, but in dogs the incidence is at least 100 times higher. Because these dogs receive medical care, have an intact immune system, and have inter-individual and intratumoral heterogeneity, the dog is a unique spontaneous animal model to study new treatment options for ACC. However, to determine similarity of canine and human A...

Introduction: Pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasm (pNEN) patients often present with locally advanced or metastatic disease. The objective response rate of peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) in pNENs is 55%. Therefore, PRRT may be a possibility for patients who are not eligible for upfront curative surgery.Aims: To assess the potency of PRRT to render locally advanced or oligometastatic pNENs resectable and to evaluate the effect of surgery afte...

Introduction: Diagnosis and exact localization of minute adenomas in Cushing disease (CD) can be problematic, leading to unsuccessful trans-sphenoidal pituitary explorations (TSS). In addition to the well established inferior petrosal sinus sampling (IPS) first described in 1989, direct intraoperative cavernous sinus sampling (CSS) and in 1993, preoperative CSS with very small catheters, have been published (1,2). The experience in relatively small series had been promising, b...

Both of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) and estrogen receptor (ER) contribute to the development of thyroid cancer. Previously, the activation of ERα was found to promote the proliferation of thyroid cancer cells, whereas activation of either ERβ or PPARγ resulted in apoptosis of thyroid cancer cells. Furthermore, a transactivation between ER and PPARγ was reported in estrogen-responsive malignancy, such as breast cancer. Howev...