Endocrine Abstracts

Aim: To assess ET1 levels in diabetic patients with and without microangiopathy, and compared with normal subjects, nondiabetic, without underlying vascular pathology.Introduction: The pathophysiology of diabetic microangiopathy is complex and many important aspects of it still are not fully understood. Endothelial dysfunction is of major importance in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and diabetic angiopathy. ET-1 is one of the most potent vasoconstri...

An 87 year old gentleman with type 2 diabetes mellitus was started on oral sodium fusidate for infected left middle toe ulcer. His blood test revealed Sodium 140 mmol/L, potassium 5.2 mmol/L, urea 25.3 mmol/L, creatinine 287 µmol/L, eGFR-19 ml/minute, albumin 29 g/L, adjusted calcium 2.17 mmol/L, and phosphate 0.95 mmol/L. Two days later he was admitted to hospital. Blood tests on admission showed severe hypocalcaemia with renal failure. (Sodium 146 mmol/LL, potassium 4.9...

Recently, a position statement of a working group for renaming diabetes insipidus (DI) appeared in several renowned endocrine journals aiming to promote a change in the established name of DI. According to this position statement, the major arguments for renaming DI are: (a) it does not optimally reflect the underlying pathophysiology (b) it is often confused with diabetes mellitus (DM) leading to treatment errors and consequent adverse outcomes for patients. Although the abov...

Ectopic Cushing’s syndrome is a rare condition accounting for 10–20% of all cases of ACTH-dependent Cushing. Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs), mainly bronchial carcinoids and small cell lung cancer, are the most frequent causes of ectopic ACTH secretion(1). Here we report two challenging cases with long duration of surveillance and monitoring.Case 1: A 42-year-old lady with a florid Cushing syndrome underwent bilateral adrenalectomy in 2002. An IP...

The relation between testosterone (T) production and action is complex, involving protein binding in the circulation affecting clearance and tissue availability, T production from precursors in peripheral tissues, deactivating and activating (to dihydrotestosterone and estradiol) metabolism within target tissues, besides factors affecting androgen responsiveness (receptor concentrations, cofactors, genetics,…). Yet, in absence of a useful independent marker of androgen a...

Transcriptional activity of androgen receptor (AR) is governed by androgenic ligands and (thought to be) fine-tuned by post-translational modifications, such as SUMOylation. We have utilized genome-wide tools to study in an unbiased fashion the role of SUMOylation in the regulation of AR-directed gene programs in prostate cancer cells. Our results show that the SUMOylation does not simply repress the AR activity, but the modification modulates the receptor activity in a target...

The relation between testosterone (T) production and action is complex, involving protein binding in the circulation affecting clearance and tissue availability, T production from precursors in peripheral tissues, deactivating and activating (to dihydrotestosterone and estradiol) metabolism within target tissues, besides factors affecting androgen responsiveness (receptor concentrations, cofactors, genetics,…). Yet, in absence of a useful independent marker of androgen a...

Background: We analyzed the role of imaging in the identification of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) metastases and in the assessment of treatment response of the patients in clinical trials and research studies devoted to MTC.Materials and methods: A search for published studies devoted to MTC from January 2010 to August 2017 was performed.Results: Fifteen studies published in peer review journals that evaluated the effects of s...

Background: Glycaemia point-of-care testing (POCT) is performed with fingerstick capillary whole-blood glucose measurement. These values normally correlate well with plasma glucose values. Hypoglycemia can be observed with POCT but should always be confirmed on plasma. True hypoglycemia must meet Whipple’s triad: signs/symptoms of hypoglycemia; low plasma glucose; improvement after glucose administration. Artifactual hypoglycemia is defined as a discrepancy between POCT a...

Introduction: First assessment of lung tumors is often performed by imaging combined with biopsy. This is necessary for immunohistochemical tumor typing, evaluation of treatment options and prognosis. It has been shown in literature reviews that Endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS) with fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is not inferior in diagnostic quality, but much less invasive than mediastinoscopy of chest laparotomy (1–3). In this case report we will describe the cut...