Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Our Diabetes Team look after approximately 220 T1DM patients aged 0–17 years. In 2014/15 NPDA we ranked amongst the top 5 paediatric units with mean HBA1c <65 mmol/mol. Susequently our ranking slipped, with increased mean HBA1c and fewer patients achieving HBA1c <58 mmol/mol.Objectives: We recognised a particular problem with poor control in the first year after diagnosis and identified the need to drive change to be able to achi...

Hormones and other analytes that are requested in the investigation of endocrine abnormalities are routinely measured using automated immunoassays in clinical laboratories. Assay kit inserts usually detail interference in terms of % cross reactivity, but this information is not always communicated to the clinician. Another complicating factor is that different assay platforms show different degrees of interference, therefore clinicians need to be aware of the source of their p...

GH replacement (GHR) has resulted in a significant improvement in quality of life for many adults with GH deficiency. Many of these patients are previously irradiated survivors of malignancy, and as such are at high risk of recurrent (RN) or secondary neoplasms (SN). There is a particularly strong association between CNS irradiation and subsequent development of meningiomas, which are known to express GH receptors. There is uncertainty as to whether GHR increases the risk of d...

Case history: A 51-year old female presented to emergency with occipital headache for 5 days on a background of recurrent headaches for over a year. She had been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease at the age of 30 and given levothyroxine, which she discontinued 5 years ago due to aversion to take medications. She had noticed cold intolerance and low energy. At presentation her body mass index was 25.26 kg/m2 and the physical exam was unremarkable; specifically,...

A 72-year-old man, otherwise fit and well, with treated hypertension presented to our hospital with abdominal pain and vomiting. He was febrile with deranged liver function tests and elevated inflammatory markers. Abdominal ultrasound showed a right suprarenal mass, and a normal gallbladder.CT confirmed a 37×31×24 mm right adrenal mass with no significant contrast enhancement, and bilateral pneumonia responsible for the septic picture. Thrombus...

The Sheffield Children’s Diabetes Team [SCDT] look after approximately 240 patients with Type 1 Diabetes aged 0–17 years. We have approximately 35 newly diagnosed patients each year and the level of social deprivation amongst our clinic population is high. Historically the team has always performed well in terms of measured outcomes and in the 2014–2015 National Paediatric Diabetes Audit [NPDA] data we ranked amongst the top five units in the country with a mean...

Introduction: Methodological differences in the immunoassay measurement of cortisol are apparent when reviewing External Quality Assessment scheme data. A bimodal distribution is often observed, particularly for samples from female subjects. It has been postulated that some immunoassays are inefficient at removing cortisol from its binding proteins and therefore have the potential to under-recover from female samples. We investigated the results obtained from two immunoassays ...

Background: Recent evidence suggests that detection of fetal goitre (defined as fetal thyroid circumference >95th percentile) may be a useful way of detecting over and under activity of the fetal thyroid in maternal Graves’ disease. Clinical translation is made difficult by the large differences in normative data from different populations. We examined fetal thyroid circumference in our population against normative data based on at least 150 examinations. Normative da...

According to the World Health Organisation iron deficiency is the most prevalent form of under-nutrition worldwide. Historically, the causes of iron deficiency were related principally to nutritional deficiencies and this remains a significant factor in many parts of the developing world. However, obesity is also a known cause of iron deficiency and is increasingly correlated with altered iron status and iron deficiency in affected individuals. As the obesity epidemic spreads ...

We previously showed acute hypoxic conditions result in atrophy of myotubes in vitro. Chronic hypoxic exposure in vivo induces muscular atrophy in healthy mountaineering individuals and patients with COPD. Myotubes in vitro increase myostatin expression in response to hypoxic exposure. Further, hypoxic COPD patients show cachexia and increased serum myostatin expression. However, in vivo results are cofounded by disease factors in COPD patie...