Endocrine Abstracts

Advances in trauma care have improved survival resulting in more severely injured individuals surviving to enter the trauma care pathway. A significant threat to recovery is now the dysregulated immune response to injury. The hyperinflammatory response of the innate immune system (SIRS), combined with immunoparesis, leads to complications such as multi-organ failure and sepsis. Moreover, recovery from trauma is significantly affected by age, which may be due to changes in the ...

Osteoporosis and associated fractures are the most common and debilitating complication of glucocorticoid use. The use of alternative anti-inflammatory agents without the catabolic and deleterious skeletal side-effects of glucocorticoids is needed. Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) may have immunomodulatory as well as positive effects on bone. To further our understanding of the mechanisms of action of DHEA, as a steroid-sparing agent, we investigated and compared the effects of D...

The calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) plays a central role in altering the secretion of parathyroid hormone (PTH) in response to alterations in extracellular calcium, and four studies have reported an association between CaSR polymorphisms and serum Ca 2+, serum PTH, and bone mineral density (BMD). However, two other studies have failed to detect such associations. We have therefore undertaken studies to investigate the Ala986Ser, Arg990Gly, and Gln1011Glu CaSR polymo...

The hypoparathyroidism, deafness and renal dysplasia (HDR) syndrome is an autosomal dominant disorder that is due to a haploinsufficiency of the zinc-finger transcription factor, GATA3 (Nature (2000) 406: 419) whose gene is located on chromosome 10p15. In order to further characterise GATA3 abnormalities we have investigated 6 HDR patients for GATA3 mutations. Leukocyte DNA samples from the 6 probands and an unrelated normal individual were used with 9 pairs of oligonucleotide...

Background: Hypertension affects more than 30% of the adult population worldwide and is a major cardiovascular risk factor. Identifying secondary causes of hypertension is key to offering targeted treatment and mitigating adverse health outcomes. We tested the performance of urine steroid metabolomics (USM), the computational analysis of 24-hour urine steroid metabolome data by machine learning, for diagnosing endocrine hypertension.<str...

Bone loss in treated Addison’s disease (autoimmune hypoadrenalism) is often attributed to supraphysiological doses of glucocorticoid. The largest international survey to date (N=613) suggests that other factors are also likely to be associated with bone loss in these patients and that an intrinsic risk of bone loss in autoimmune hypoadrenalism cannot be ruled out. This survey also found significant rates of osteoarthritis among autoimmune hypoadrenalism patients. 1...