Endocrine Abstracts

While phaeochromocytomas are rare tumours, their identification is essential to avoid morbidity and mortality; their biochemical identification is crucial. Plasma and 24 urinary metanephrines are used as first line investigations, with plasma metanephrines increasingly used first due to its simplicity and high sensitivity/specificity. False positive results, however, can be as high as 20%, particularly secondary to medications; their exclusion is essential to avoid unnecessary...

Introduction: Bilateral 3rd nerve palsy is known in conditions such as diabetes mellitus, neurosarcoidosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, multiple sclerosis, anterior or posterior communicating artery aneurysm or mesencephalic bleed/trauma. There are only single cases reported in association with pituitary adenoma or carcinoma, usually in the context of apoplexy. We describe a patient with Cushing’s disease and bilateral 3rd nerve palsy secondary to apoplexy in pituitary macro...

Introduction: Since there is no completely effective therapy available for malignant phaeochromocytomas (PCCs) and paragangliomas, we have been investigating novel targeted therapies utilising one more benign (MPC) and one more malignant (MTT) PCC cell line. We have previously shown that the IGF1-receptor-inhibitor NVP-AEW541 led to compensatory ERK and mTORC1 up-regulation at suboptimal doses and that the dual PI3K/mTORC1-inhibitor NVP-BEZ235 also resulted in compensatory ERK...

Hyperprolactinaemia in association with a large sellar lesion could represent either tumoural secretion of prolactin (PRL) or stalk disruption by a non-prolactinoma: the differentiation has important therapeutic consequences. We have previously shown that based on currently used assays disconnection hyperprolactinaemia associated with non-functioning adenoma (NFA) practically never exceeds levels above 2000 mU/l. We aimed to verify our proposed disconnection hyperprolactinaemi...

A relapse rate of more than 50% is quoted for patients with Graves’ Disease (GD) treated with anti-thyroid drugs. Our aim was to audit the outcome/relapse rate and possible predictive factors in a series of patients managed in our Nurse-led Thyroid Clinic (NLTC). The notes of patients with newly-diagnosed GD seen in the NLTC between 2005–2011 who had completed 18 months of anti-thyroid drug were reviewed: 60 patients (48 females) were identified. After 18 months of t...

GH influences multiple metabolic pathways. Excess GH (acromegaly) causes a distinct form of cardiomyopathy, which may progress to fulminant heart failure. AMPK is an energy conservation enzyme that modulates multiple areas of the cell stress response, inhibiting anabolism and promoting catabolism. AMPK is activated by phosphorylation at Thr172 and measurement of Thr172 phosphorylation is thought to correlate with enzyme activity. We investigated the influence of GH on cardiac ...

Pituitary adenomas are benign tumours, which do not involve mutations in tumour suppressor genes or oncogenes. We have shown that the canonical Raf/MAPK and PI(3)K/Akt pathways are over-activated in these tumours, but their downstream effectors are modified to a much lesser extent. It is probable that the oncogenic mutations responsible for the initiation of these tumours therefore lies proximal to the convergence of these pathways, at or even upstream to the growth factor rec...

Ghrelin is a circulating growth hormone-releasing and appetite-inducing brain–gut peptide. It needs to be acylated on its serine-3 with octanoate for its endocrine actions. The acyl-transferase that catalyses ghrelin octanoylation has been recently identified and named GOAT (ghrelin O-acyltransferase), which is coded by the MBOAT4 gene. This study aimed to investigate GOAT expression in human. The distribution of GOAT mRNA expression was studied in various human ti...

Somatostatin and its analogues negatively regulate the growth of multiple epithelial cell types. This anti-proliferative effect occurs through multiple mechanisms, one of which is cell cycle arrest at the G0/G1 phase. p27, a cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, has a negative influence on cell cycle progression, and there are recent data suggesting that somatostatin increases p27 levels. We have previously shown that pituitary adenoma cells contain less p27 protein than normal p...

Sporadic pituitary tumours are generally benign tumours in which the none of the oncogenes or tumour suppressor genes classically mutated in other cancers are commonly mutated, nor are there frequent changes in genes associated with genetic endocrine neoplasia syndromes. Such tumours are associated with excessive but not completely unregulated proliferation, implicating a possible abnormality in a cell signalling pathway in their pathogenesis. Recently, the serine/threonine ki...