Endocrine Abstracts

Liquid Chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) is gold-standard for androgen analysis in biological fluids, superseding immunoassays in specificity, particularly at low concentrations. While LC–MS/MS is well established for analysis of testosterone (T) and androstenedione (A4), 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT) presents greater analytical challenges. DHT circulates at low nanomolar concentrations in men and lower in women, ionising inefficiently. Thus, eve...

Introduction: Intrauterine growth is a biological process regulated by maternal, placental, and foetal endocrine signals. Birth weight is an indicator of the health of the newborn. Alterations in foetal growth lead to perinatal health risks and favour metabolic diseases during adult life. Therefore, the study of endocrine factors determining birth weight, such as ghrelin is an important issue. Ghrelin may exist as two molecular forms, desacyl ghrelin (DAG) and acyl ghrelin (AG...

A 69-year-old lady presented to the ophthalmologists in view of a right 6th cranial nerve palsy and headache. Neuroimaging showed a central and right sided base of skull tumour with involvement of multiple cranial nerves (3rd, 4th, 6th). An endoscopic biopsy was inconclusive. She presented to the medical team few days later with drowsiness, lethargy, and her sodium was found to be 117 mmol/l with a potassium of 5.5 mmol/l. Serum osmolality was 267 mOsm/kg, urine osmolality was...

The great majority of the phosphorus in the body is found as phosphate (PO4). Phosphate is critical for the maintenance of bone and skeletal integrity, is a necessary component of important biomolecules, such as RNA and DNA, and is central to signal transduction and cell metabolism. The appropriate serum phosphate concentration is maintained based on the endocrine communication between the skeleton, the kidney, and the intestine. The classical view of phosphate regu...

Context: Denosumab, a fully human monoclonal antibody that inactivates receptor activator of nuclear factor k-B ligand (RANKL), is used for osteoporosis treatment because of its potent anti-resorptive properties. Due to its reversible mode of action, bone resorption increases rapidly after its discontinuation and is accompanied by a quick loss of bone mineral density. Spontaneous vertebral fractures at this period have been recognized as secondary to the rebound of bone resorp...

Introduction: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) are a new drug generation used for advanced neoplasias. They are monoclonal antibodies which enhance the immune system to combat cancer cells. As a result, immunologic tolerance can be altered and autoimmunity triggered. Toxicities associated to ICIs have been named immune-related adverse events (irAE). ‘Time to resolution’ of endocrine irAEs have not been well described as this term has not been defined in clinical tr...

Oxytocin (OT) treatment improves heart functional recovery in rat model of myocardial infarct. We investigated in the H9c2 cell line (cardiomyocytes model), mechanism of OT action in simulated ischemia - reperfusion (sI-R). H9c2 cells were suspended in warm ischemic buffer and placed inside an anoxic chamber for 2 h at 37 °C, then ‘reperfused’ under normal nutrients and oxygen conditions for 2 h. OT presence during ischemia increased cell viability by 9.7±2...

Epidemiological studies suggest that hypovitaminosis D is common in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT). They have higher levels of serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) and markers of bone turnover, and more frequent fractures than vitamin D replete patients. There are concerns that vitamin D repletion in these patients might exacerbate pre-existent hypercalcaemia, although recent literature suggests this is uncommon.We aimed to determine the eff...

Syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis hormone (SIADH) with many disorders of the nervous system have been reported frequently but its association with multiple sclerosis (MS) is extremely rare (only six cases reported in the literature).A 46 years old woman was admitted to our hospital because of hypersomnolence, confusion and visual disturbances. She presented 6 months before a variety of neurological symptoms suggestive of demyelinating disease withou...

Objectives: Patients with acquired growth hormone (GH) deficiency secondary to hypopituitarism, have a significant increased risk of cardiovascular events. However, variable data of the effects of GH replacement and its benefits reducing such risk, is available. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of 0.4 milligrams of GH on cardiovascular markers in severe GH deficient adults with hypopituitarism.Methods: A total of 17 patients (10 males an...