Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Measurement of urinary cortisol is commonly used in the investigation of suspected Cushing’s Syndrome and is most often performed using immunoassay. This approach exhibits significant assay variability necessitating the use of method specific reference ranges. A reference range for cortisol nmol/L: creatinine mmol/L ratio is reported based on the results from 104 early morning urine samples collected from healthy individuals and analysed using the AutoDelfia A...

131I-metaiodobenzylguanide (MIBG) therapy, initially introduced in the 1980s, has emerged as a first-line to treatment of malignant phaeochromocytomas. Its other notable use has been in treating neuroblastomas occurring in childhood serving as an adjuvant prior to surgery or chemotherapy. An observed known late consequence of MIBG therapy is Primary ovarian failure (POI), characterised by menstrual irregularities over a period of 4 months associated with high Follicular stimul...

Introduction: Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) have diverse natural history and clinical syndromes. As a result of the disease or related to management, patients may have altered gut or pancreatic function that can cause nutritional deficiencies. There is a lack of consistent evidence-based dietetic guidance for patients with NETs.Aim: This study evaluated whether nutritional status and nutritional deficiencies had been assessed in patients with NETs in an ...

Introduction: CACNA1C gene encodes the L-type voltage dependent calcium channels and its variants are associated with susceptibility to psychiatric disorders. We recently provided evidence of a genotype-by-environment interaction of the CACNA1C rs1006737 polymorphism, suggesting that the cortisol awakening response (CAR), an indicator of HPA-axis function, might be increased in non-risk allele carriers (GG) who have experienced childhood trauma (CT). In these...

Higher short-term exercise-associated reproductive, psychological and bone health-related outcomes have been reported in women than men, although the reasons for this are poorly understood. The first, all-female transantarctic expedition provided a unique opportunity to perform an observational study examining concurrent effects of extreme exercise on pertinent hormonal axes to reproductive dysfunction and associated pathology. Body composition was measured by dual-energy xray...

Background: Both excess and insufficient glucocorticoid exposure in utero is associated with adverse fetal outcomes. Characterising the maternal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is challenging with large intra-individual variations in plasma and saliva. We hypothesised that 24-hour total urinary glucocorticoid (TUG) is a marker of maternal HPA axis during pregnancy. We tested associations of TUG with maternal BMI and birthweight.Methods: TUG was...

Background: Metformin is widely used for treatment of gestational diabetes mellitus. Metformin is considered safe in pregnancy but crosses the placenta. The limited available data of follow-up of children exposed to metformin in utero suggests potential for increased adiposity but mechanisms are unknown. As placental DNA methylation has been linked to later obesity and metformin causes global DNA methylation changes in cancer cell lines we hypothesised that this may be a candi...

Background: Using a deuterated tracer (D4-cortisol) to measure cortisol regeneration from cortisone in vivo we have quantified tissue-specific 11βHSD1 activity in health and disease, and acute regulation eg by insulin. These studies relied on tracer enrichment in the total plasma cortisol pool, assuming rapid equilibration between free and protein-bound pools. Slower equilibration would result in underestimation of enzyme activity, and has implications for the co...

Introduction: Intestinal cholesterol absorption is known to be important in post-prandial lipid levels, and implicated in the development of vascular disease. This study evaluated the effect of intestinal gene expression on markers of early vascular disease in a cohort of diabetic and non-diabetic subjects.Methods: Subjects were identified from routine upper GI lists and enrolled as per local ethics approval. Intestinal gene expression was measured on du...

Tissue cortisol levels are amplified by the enzyme 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1). In mice, transgenic overexpression of 11β-HSD1 causes the metabolic syndrome, consequently 11β-HSD1 inhibitors are a promising therapeutic target. However, determining the importance of 11β-HSD1 in humans has proved more complicated, in part due to difficulty quantifying in vivo activity. We hypothesized that cortisol regeneration by 11β-H...