Endocrine Abstracts

As non-invasive imaging techniques, such as sonography, become more and more available, there is a growing incidence of diagnosing of non-fuctioning adrenal tumors. They are usually called adrenal incidentalomas due to absence of any evident clinical manifestations. Adrenal incidentalomas are found in 2-8% population. Although generally non-funtioning, those tumors may secrete abundant quantities of steroid hormones and thus evoke glucose intolerance, lipid disorders, thromboe...

The diagnosis of primary aldosteronism results in either the surgical cure of hypertension or targeted pharmacotherapy. The two major subtypes of primary aldosteronism are unilateral aldosterone-producing adenoma (APA) and bilateral idiopathic hyperplasia (IHA). Patients with APA are usually treated with unilateral adrenalectomy, and patients with IHA are treated medically. Most patients with primary aldosteronism have IHA and require pharmacotherapy. Because of the recent rec...

Erectile failure is a common yet often neglected complication of diabetes that may have a significant negative effect on quality of life and diabetes self-care. I would initially try to ensure a good ascertainment rate of the problem in men attending the diabetes service. I would encourage, though usually fail to persuade men to attend with their partners. I would ascertain the exact nature of the problem, the likely cause, the importance of the problem to the man, the nature ...

Childhood onset Type 2 diabetes mellitus is appearing in Asia. Sadly, the risk factors appear to be obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, and a family history of type 2 diabetes mellitus or gestational diabetes and IUGR. Comorbidities include abnormal lipid profiles, steatohepatitis, hypertension for age and obstructive sleep apnoeaModalities of treatment include diet, exercise, insulin, metformin, and sulphonylureas and more recently, the use of insulin sens...

Background: Neuroendocrine tumors awareness is developing. Carcinoid syndrome and hormonal overproduction may be controlled with somatostatin analogues in majority of cases. However, due to unspecific symptomatology in early stages of disease, majority of cases are diagnosed when process is disseminated. Co-morbidities and coexisting diseases are present in most of patients. Bone loss may be accelerated by metastizing tumor, peptides secreted or decreased absorption of vitamin...

Purpose: Bronchopulmonary (BP) and gastroenteropancreatic (GEP) neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN) are slow-growing tumors, which frequently express somatostatin receptors on their cell membranes. These receptors are targets for therapy with 177Lutetium-labeled somatostatin analogues.Experimental Design: Patients receive four treatments of 177Lu-DOTATATE at a dose of 7.4 GBq every 8 weeksResults: An objective resp...

With increasing numbers of survivors from cancer at a young age the issue of fertility preservation has assumed greater importance. Female fertility preservation provides significantly different challenges to that for the male. Embryo freezing is now an accepted and well-established procedure in many centres, but is not available for children who do not have a partner. Cryopreservation using vitrification of mature oocytes has become increasingly successful, but requires the p...

Chemotherapy has historically been the ‘work horse’ of medical oncology. An improved understanding of the biological behavious of neuroendocrine neoplasms has led to decision-making based on pathological characterisation of neuroendocrine neoplasms in to well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) vs poorly-differentiated neuroendocrine carcinomas (NECs). Platinum/etoposide has an established role in high-grade NECs with high responses, although these are often...

Nuclear receptors control gene expression by recruiting transcriptional coactivators (or corepressors). The coactivators are ‘master regulators’ that coordinately activate multiple distinct transcription factors and target genes and pathways to control major physiologic processes such as reproduction, development, inflammation, metabolism and growth. Because of their central role as regulatory ‘nodes’, coactivators are major targets in the development of nu...

Bert W O’MalleyBert W O’Malley, MD is the Tom Thompson Distinguished Service Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine. A native of Pittsburgh, he has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1959) and an MD from their School of Medicine (1963). He completed his residency at Duke University and spent four years at the National Institute of Health followed by four years serving as the Luscious B...