Endocrine Abstracts

Moderate, ‘Atkin’s-style’ low-carbohydrate/high fat diets (LC-HFD) are claimed to induce weight loss in overweight subjects and to ameliorate glucose metabolism, whereas extreme ketogenic LC-HFD are used to treat neurological disorders like pediatric epilepsy. To investigate the effects of both types of LC-HFD on glucose and insulin metabolism independent of the energetic intake, we pair-fed male Wistar rats isoenergetic of standard rodent chow (CH) or one of tw...

Introduction: GH substitution in GH deficiency (GHD) must be subcutaneously administered daily. Recently, a new sustained release formulation of GH (LB03002) has been developed which has to be injected only once per week. As a sub-study to the double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter, phase-III-study we performed this prospective study to evaluate influences of the new GH formulation on metabolic parameters and the hormones leptin and ghrelin in adult patients...

Introduction: GH rises dose dependently during treatment with the GH receptor antagonist pegvisomant. Ghrelin stimulates GH secretion. In de novo acromegalic patients with high GH levels, ghrelin levels are lowered and fat mass is reduced. Leptin levels are positively correlated to fat mass. We performed this cross-sectional study to evaluate whether elevated endogenous GH in acromegalic patients on pegvisomant treatment (peg) reduces ghrelin and leptin levels.<p class="ab...

Aldosterone is synthesized acutely upon stimulation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system from the cells of the zona glomerulosa. Several enzymes are involved in this steroidogenic process including the steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR), P450 side chain cleavage enzyme (Cyp11a1) and aldosterone synthase, the product of the gene Cyp11b2.We investigated the short time transcriptional regulation of these genes in wild type mi...

The physiological and pathophysiological significance of hGH isoforms remains to be fully elucidated. In order to study the two most abundant hGH isoforms 20 and 22 kDa hGH, we have generated monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against 20 and 22 kDa hGH. The mAbs against 20 and 22 kDa were characterized for their specificity and epitopes with different binding assays as well as by Western blot. The mAb 1G12 against 20 kDa with lower than 0.05% cross reactivity to 22 kDa hGH combined ...

Mice overexpressing growth hormone (GH) have about two-fold higher IGF-I and clear increases in body and organ weights. Moreover, administration of GH to hypophysectomised or dwarf mice has been shown to increase IGF-I. Data on the short term effects of exogenous administration of rhGH in normal rodents remain scarce.Therefore, we measured IGF-I before and after one week of GH-treatment in 10-week-old female mice, injected daily with two different doses ...

Recent molecular studies suggest a role of ectopic G protein coupled receptors in primary aldosteronism (PA). The clinical relevance of these findings is not known. We therefore combined expression profiling and a clinical testing of hormone responsiveness in patients with primary aldosteronism. Sixteen tissues from aldosterone producing adenomas and 6 normal adrenal glands were subjected to a quantitative PCR for determination of mRNA expression levels of AT2R, GIPR, MC2R, Gn...

In GH deficiency (GHD), fat mass is elevated compared to normal subjects. Leptin is positively related to fat mass, BMI and food intake, while ghrelin correlates negatively. During an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), leptin increases in obese subjects and generally does not change in normal weight subjects. Ghrelin decreases during OGTT. We performed a cross-sectional study in order to investigate the influence of GH-substitution on leptin and ghrelin in GHD.<p class="a...

High-fat/low carbohydrate (HF–LC) diets in humans, such as the Atkin’s diet, are claimed to work in an ad libitum setting. In a previous study, we had demonstrated reduced bodyweight (BW) gain in rats when pair-fed isocaloric amounts of a HF–LC compared to normal chow (CH). However, rats on HF–LC also showed increased body fat and low serum IGF-I. We now compared BW development, food intake and resting energy expenditure (EE) in an ad libitum setting in mal...

Nadir growth hormone (GH) levels after oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) as well as random insulin-like growth-factor I (IGF-I) levels, given as multiples of the upper limit of normal [xULN], were used to evaluate biochemical activitiy of acromegalic patients. The development of new, more sensitive GH assays makes it necessary to reevaluate the cut off values of the GH nadir after OGTT.In a cross sectional study, we evaluated nadir GH concentrations dur...