Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Among patients diagnosed with primary aldosteronism (PA) due to an aldosterone producing adenoma (APA), about 10% fail to normalize aldosterone hypersecretion after unilateral adrenalectomy, and may instead have bilateral aldosterone producing hyperplasia. With routine histopathology it may be difficult to distinguish between APA and hyperplasia. We have recently reported the use of specific antibodies to identify the source of aldosterone excess in the removed adr...

The commonest cause of acquired hypopituitarism is a benign pituitary adenoma. However, in patients with non-pituitary malignancy different diagnoses need to be considered. We describe three oncology patients presenting with hypopituitarism and/or a pituitary mass where the cause was related either to malignant disease or its treatment.Case 1: A 56-year-old man with known metastatic melanoma presented with increasing lethargy. Investigation showed a larg...

Introduction: Autoantibodies (aAB) are characteristic of autoimmune diseases, but may also be found in apparently healthy individuals and precede pathological symptoms. We have recently reported on autoantibodies against the IGF1-receptor (IGF1R-aAB) in control subjects and patients with Graves’ disease (1). The isolated aAB were able to immunoprecipitate the recombinant autoantigen and antagonized IGF1 signaling in vitro. Given the structural similarities betwee...

Stafford Lightman is Professor of Medicine at the University of Bristol and is Director of the Henry Wellcome Laboratories for Integrative Neuroscience and Endocrinology. He started his scientific career working on catecholamines and opioid peptides with Leslie Iversen at the University of Cambridge and provided some of the first data linking opioid peptides with the regulation of neurohypophysial function. At this time he also performed some of the first studies demonstrating...

In recent years, the increasing availability of massive computational capacity has reached what may be seen as a ‘tipping point’, bringing once unimaginable computational power into the lab. This is enabling models to be built, fit and refined during experiments, making predictive models that are powerful tools for hypothesis generation and testing. Neuroendocrine systems are at the forefront of these advances. Because of the exceptional opportunities that they offer...

Idiopathic infantile hypercalcemia (IIH) (OMIM 143880) is characterised by severe hypercalcemia, failure to thrive, vomiting, dehydration and nephrocalcinosis. Laboratory evaluation of infants affected with this condition reveals hypercalcemia, suppressed parathyroid hormone and hypercalciuria. Recently loss of function mutations in CYP24A1 gene have been found to cause IIH (New England Journal of Medicine 2011 365 410–21). Short-term treatment for th...

Richard JM Ross, Professor of Endocrinology, Faculty Academic Lead for Innovation and Head of Unit Diabetes, Endocrinology & Metabolism, University of Sheffield, UK AbstractRichard Ross trained in Medicine at The Royal London Hospital (1974–1979) and in Endocrinology at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London (1983–1988). He was appointed to Sheffield University in 1995 and is Professor of Endocrinology and He...

This story began shortly before my time. My involvement came about through wartime work for the Navy on survival at sea, and an eccentric professor. In 1942 Hetherington & Ranson in the USA found that lesions in the ventromedial nuclei of the hypothalamus in rats cause obesity. The suggestion that a hormone was involved came from my Ph.D. project, published in the Journal of Physiology as a Communication in 1957 and a full paper in 1959. In a number of rats in parabiotic p...

Introduction: In type-1 neurofibromatosis (NF-1) there is an increased risk of endocrine tumors, especially pheochromocytomas, whereas thyroid carcinomas seem to be extremely rare, with few cases reported in literature.Subjects and methods: In order to investigate the frequency of hypercalcitoninaemia and medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) in patients with NF-1, we evaluated the thyroid gland morphology and function in 17 patients with NF-1 by i) neck US, ii...

S Melmed, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, USA. AbstractShlomo Melmed received his medical degree with distinction from the University of Cape Town, School of Medicine in 1970. At Cedars-Sinai since 1980, he is now Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs, and Dean of the Medical Faculty. He is also Professor and Associate Dean of UCLA School of Medicine.Dr Melmed is a Dip...