Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Pituitary disorders are associated with increased mortality and morbidity. Data on the prevalence of pituitary disorders is scarce. Formal routine coding of diagnoses in outpatient endocrine practice lags behind medical coding of inpatients. Standardised coding could improve our understanding of disease burden and highlight areas of increasing need within our services.Objective: Automatically extract and assign SNOMED codes for endocrine di...

Nausea/vomiting induced by smoke inhalation is a common phenomenon, possibly explaining why many people who have a naturally strong reaction rarely take up smoking tobacco. The tachykinins are an ancient family of bioactive peptides distinguished by the common C-terminal motif, Phe-X-Gly-Leu-Met-amide. In humans, there are four members: substance P (SP), endokinin (EK) also known as hemokinin (HK), neurokinin A and neurokinin B, which sig...

Introduction: Obesity is associated with increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk but the underlying pathways are unclear. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are circulating submicron particles containing proteins, enzymes and mRNA of their donor cells. They could mediate some of these risks by paracrine actions in target cells.Aims: To compare the concentration and characteristics of circulating EVs from healthy volunteers (HV)...

Nausea/vomiting induced by smoke inhalation is a common phenomenon, possibly explaining why many people who have a naturally strong reaction rarely take up smoking tobacco. The tachykinins are an ancient family of bioactive peptides distinguished by the common C-terminal motif, Phe-X-Gly-Leu-Met-amide. In humans, there are four members: substance P (SP), endokinin (EK) also known as hemokinin (HK), neurokinin A and neurokinin B, which sig...

Introduction: Obesity is associated with increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk but the underlying pathways are unclear. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are circulating submicron particles containing proteins, enzymes and mRNA of their donor cells. They could mediate some of these risks by paracrine actions in target cells.Aims: To compare the concentration and characteristics of circulating EVs from healthy volunteers (HV)...

Background: Neanderthals split from an ancestral human population ~500,000 years ago and lived in Eurasia until 40,000 years ago. Early modern humans emerged in Africa ~350,000 years ago migrating into Eurasia 50,000 years ago. Interbreeding occurred between early modern humans and Neanderthals leading to the introduction of Neanderthal DNA into the early human population, a process termed introgression. In modern Eurasian populations around 2-4% of DNA is of Neanderthal origi...

Plasma adrenocorticotrophin (ACTH) is extremely labile and far from an ideal analyte for use in the diagnosis of Cushing’s syndrome. Processing of ACTH by some ectopic tumours releases high levels of smaller ACTH-like fragments, α-MSH and CLIP, which can interfere with individual antibodies in current diagnostic immunoassays. Furthermore, cross-reactivity with the precursor of ACTH, pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC), increases the likelihood of erroneous interpretations an...

Background: Hypercalcaemia is common in renal transplant recipients, the majority of whom have PTH-dependent hypercalcaemia due to tertiary hyperparathyroidism. PTH-independent hypercalcaemia is less common and is associated with significant, treatable underlying pathologies. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the prevalence and aetiology of PTH-independent hypercalcaemia in post-renal transplant patients.Method: This was a retrospective, single-centre ...

Introduction: Central obesity is a significant risk factor for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), with omental adipose tissue (AT) particularly involved in such risk. Additionally, obesity can cause low-level gut-derived endotoxemia, which may drive metabolic dysfunction in AT through mitochondrial damage and reduced BRITE (brown-in-white) adipocytes. Bariatric surgery reduces obesity and may prevent such dysfunction. This study investigated whether endotoxin: 1) impairs mitocho...

Neuropathic pain (NP) is a microvascular complication affecting between 30-50% of people living with diabetes. Current painkillers including non-steroidal pain killers and anti-convulsant are ineffective. At the level of the spinal cord (SC), capillary regression is associated with the onset of NP in diabetic rodent models. Our aim was to investigate angiotensin II mediated pericyte activation in relation to vascular degeneration and the onset of NP. Adult male C57Bl/6J mice w...