Endocrine Abstracts

Case history: Two Syrian refugee siblings aged 21 and 20 years, were referred. Ambiguous genitalia had been identified at birth and had been raised as males. They wished a more masculine habitus and had concerns regarding their fertility. The elder sibling had ambiguous genitalia at birth and a 46,XX karyotype. Long-term steroid treatment had been initiated and corrective genital surgery performed at 9 months of age. For unknown reasons, steroids were stopped after 9 years. He...

Introduction: The causes of arterial hypertension in diabetic and non-diabetic hypertensive patients are still not clear. However, in recent studies in non-diabetic hypertensive patients (NDHP) we observed dysregulation of aldosterone (ALD) secretion either in the form of autonomous secretion or as hyperesponse to stress. To the best of our knowledge, a similar study in hypertensive patients with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DHP) has not been conducted yet....

Introduction: To assess the effect of community-based multidisciplinary lifestyle interventions on metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its components in an urban population of Iranian adolescents.Methods: This longitudinal study was conducted on 1230 adolescents, aged 12–15 years, within the framework of the TLGS. They were categorised in three groups: those residing in the intervention area during study (complete intervention group; n=195); thos...

Prostaglandin (PG) E2 acts through its receptors (EP1–4) to modulate myometrial contractions and cervical ripening at term gestation. Although uterine PGE2 biosynthesis is augmented with labour progression (Durn et al. 2008); functional EP1–4 receptors have yet to be determined. To characterise these receptors in gravid human myometrium, in vitro responses to selective and novel EP agonists were investigated b...

Mitochondria play an important role in generating energy, and they are essential to cell survival. Mitochondria have varieties of functions, such as regulating intracellular calcium concentration and signal transduction, controlling hormone synthesis, inflammatory responses, and free radicals. In particular, this research is interested in the mitochondria in kidney tubular cell. Since mitochondria in tubular cells play an important role in supplying energy, removal of waste an...

Despite intense efforts over the past decades, human pancreatic beta cell lines with physiological insulin secretion have not been available. We have developed a robust transplantation model of fetal human pancreases that recapitulates pancreas development and combined such model with integrative lentiviral-mediated gene transfer. This resulted in production of human transgenic pancreases in which dynamic aspects of development can be studied. We thus forced expression of immo...

A statement attributed to Aristotle is: ‘You can easily avoid criticism by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.’ If you want to do research, apply for competitive grants and publish relevant scientific papers in competitive journals, criticism is a fact of life. There is also a positive twist to criticism: it is a major driving force to advance knowledge in science.Frequently, the first reaction of authors to critical comments of r...

During the development in the thymus, a virgin repertoire of diverse TCR-αβ recognition specificities in immature T cells is selected through positive and negative selection to form a functionally competent and self-tolerant repertoire of mature T cells. Positive selection supports the survival of self-MHC-restricted thymocytes that receive low-affinity TCR engagement, whereas negative selection deletes potentially harmful self-reactive thymocytes upon high-affinity ...

Platinum nanoparticles have shown to have a remarkable antioxidant activity. Growing evidence between oxidative stress and bone loss suggests that platinum nanoparticle could protect bone loss via modulating oxidative stress. Intragastrical administration of platinum nanoparticle reduced ovariectomy (OVX)-induced bone loss with lowered level of in vivo bone resorption. Platinum nanoparticle inhibited osteoclast (OC) formation via an impaired receptor activator of nuclea...

KCNJ11 as well as UCP2 genes are involved via modulation of ATP concentration in pancreatic beta-cells in control of insulin secretion. The aim of study was to compare genotypic distribution of E23K (KCNJ11) and G-866A (UCP2) polymorphisms between diabetics, their offspring and controls and to study the possible association of these polymorphisms with biochemical and anthropometric parameters.The study entered 302 diabetics, 165 offspring, 241 controls. ...