Endocrine Abstracts

A 46-year-old male presented in 1981 with a 2 year history of profuse watery diarrhoea, three stone weight loss and fatigue. On examination he appeared gaunt with diffuse muscle weakness. Investigations revealed hypokalaemia (2.5 mmol/l; NR 3.5–4.5), achlorhydria and a raised vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP) (1500ng/L; NR 0–100). Abdominal CT showed a 5 cm pancreatic mass but with no focal liver pathology. A distal pancreatectomy was performed. Histology confi...

Maternal nutrient restriction predisposes the adult offspring to metabolic syndrome. We investigated the effect of energy restriction during early or late gestation on glucose-insulin dynamics during a GTT (0.5 g/kg i.v. glucose) and/or an ITT (0.75 IU/kg) prior to and after significant gain in adipose tissue. 20 sheep were either fed to maintenance (1 M; CE, n=6) or to 0.65 M during early (0–65 days, term=147days, LEE, n=7) or late (65–125 days, LEL; <...

Background: Recent data suggest a direct impact of ghrelin and leptin on the immune system. Ghrelin appears to antagonize these effects. The role of ghrelin and leptin in the context of ANCA-associated vasculitis (AV) has not been reported.Methods: Fasting serum ghrelin, free and bound leptin levels were measured in 44 patients with active AV and 25 in matched healthy controls. Follow-up under immunosuppressive therapy was available in 25 patients (1, 3,...

Before the development of purified insulin in the 1970s, lipoatrophy was a common complication of insulin therapy (1–2). With the arrival of human insulin, lipoatrophy, becoming a rare problem in clinical practice.Lipoatrophies are considered an adverse immunological side effect of insulin therapy, and in some cases they are mediated by a local high production of tumour necrosis factor-α, w...

Introduction: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are submicron vesicles released by most cells. They contain protein, enzymes and microRNA of the donor cells and are believed to play a role in paracrine communication. Circulating EVs might reflect heightened immune/inflammatory status in obese individuals and play a role in initiation/modulation of chronic low grade inflammation associated with obesity.Aims: To compare circulating plasma EVs between healthy vo...

Background: Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and associated mitochondrial dysfunction contribute to the pathogenesis of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Studies show broccoli can reduce inflammation in cancer and may therefore mitigate inflammation-induced cellular disruption that precedes insulin resistance in human adipocytes. Therefore these studies investigated the impact of freeze-dried broccoli extracts (BE) on ER stress and mitochondrial dy...

Background: Patients with type 2 diabetes and overweight have a chronic activation of the innate immune system possibly explaining the increased risk of a hyperinflammatory response and severe COVID-19. We aimed to test whether blockade of interleukin-1β(IL-1β) using canakinumab improves clinical outcome.Methods: CanCovDia was a multicenter, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to assess the efficacy of canakinumab plus standard-o...

Background: Head and neck paragangliomas (HNPGL) are rare, usually benign slow-growing tumours arising from neural crest-derived tissue. Definitive treatment strategies for HNPGL have not been clearly defined.Aims: To provide a comprehensive review of our institutional experience of the clinical features, investigations, management and follow up of this cohort.Methods: Baseline clinical information was taken from a prospectively ma...

The anti-diabetic drug, metformin, is associated with progressive decrease in serum vitamin B12 levels whereas vitamin B12 deficiency is related to increased insulin resistance and dyslipidaemia by altered methylation. As the risk of vitamin B12 deficiency is increased among metformin users, it is of utmost importance to examine how metformin response in vitamin B12 deficient population.We investigated the cellular mechanism of metformin in vitamin B12 i...

Mitochondria are essential for synthesising ATP required for cellular metabolism. In response to changes in their cellular environment, mitochondria are able to alter their morphology and abundance through the balance of “fusion” and “fission” events. The aim of this study was to profile the expression of mitochondrial genes in the abdominal subcutaneous (AbSc) adipose tissue (AT) of lean, obese and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) individuals and determine ...