Endocrine Abstracts

Measurement of plasma aldosterone and renin concentration, or activity, is useful for selecting antihypertensive agents as well as detecting hyperaldosteronism in hypertensive patients. However, it takes several days to get results when measured by radioimmunoassay and development of more rapid assays has been long expected. We have developed chemiluminescent enzyme immunoassays enabling the simultaneous measurement of both aldosterone and renin concentrations in ten-minutes b...

Introduction: Adult patients with craniopharyngioma (CP) and hypothalamic (HT) damage have impaired cognitive function. The white matter (WM) changes behind these findings remain to be elucidated. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a MRI technique that quantifies microstructural damage in the WM. This is the first study of DTI, hippocampal (HC) and HT volume in relation to cognition in CP patients.Methods: A cross-sectional study of childhood onset CP was...

Introduction: In the etiology of thyroid dysgenesis (TD) an interplay between genetic and environmental factors is thought to play a crucial role. Data from previous studies on association between the season of birth and the incidence of TD causing congenital hypothyroidism (mainly agenesis and ectopy) are conflicting. To date, seasonality of births have not been analysed yet in regard to congenital absence of one thyroid lobe (thyroid hemiagenesis, THA).<p class="abstext"...

Adrenocortical tumorigenesis in prepubertally gonadectomized (GDX) DBA/2J mice has been attributed to chronically elevated luteinizing hormone (LH) and ectopic expression of luteinizing hormone receptor (LHCGR) and GATA-4 transcription factor. We analyzed now the mechanistic role of LH-LHCGR activation in GDX-induced adrenocortical tumorigenesis in intact and ovariectomized (OVX) wild-type (WT) and Lhcgr-/- mice in the DBA/2J genetic background mice, or by ...

Background and aim: Up to now, there is paucity of studies concerning health status in adults with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). We aimed to examine a group of adult CAH patients from different Czech centers.Methods: Serum lipids, glucose, blood pressure and anhtropometrics were compared in 31 males and 71 females with CAH 21-hydroxylase deficiency and in healthy population from Czech post-MONICA study (1% random population sample).<p class="...

Introduction: Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is a widely adopted pre-operative investigatory tool for thyroid nodules. The British Thyroid Association (BTA) recently updated guidelines recommending that an FNAC that initially yields benign cytology (Thy2) should be repeated if there is any clinical or ultrasound (US) suspicion (1). We postulate that there is a tendency for a more conservative approach in older age groups with smaller thyroid nodules on US studies.<...

Research question: What are the differences in foetal size in early pregnancy between GDM and control.Methods: Serial foetal biometry was performed for GDM women and controls at 18–20 weeks and 28–32 weeks. At each visit, abdominal and head circumference (AC) & (HC), femur length (FL) and abdominal wall thickness (AWT) was measured along with collection of maternal data.Results: women with GDM and 184 controls had com...

Nodular thyroid disease is frequently observed in patients with acromegaly. The aim of this study is to evaluate thyroid nodules and thyroid cancer frequency in acromegalic patients. The data of 125 acromegalic (55 males and 70 females) patients followed over 10 years were evaluated retrospectively from the recorded files. Data for gender, age, duration of acromegaly, thyroid function tests, thyroid ultrasonography (US), and thyroid fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) and thy...

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a disorder associated with infertility and metabolic disturbances. Ovaries of PCOS women contain an increased number of growing follicles. Such an ovarian phenotype is also observed in mice lacking the ovary-specific growth factor anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH). To determine the interaction between ovarian and metabolic function, we studied the metabolic phenotype of mice lacking AMH signaling as a model for an altered profile in ovarian ...

The advent of mice as the most common animal used for metabolic studies was caused by the possibility to perform gene manipulations in this species (which first very recently has become possible in the previously most studied animal: the rat). Although the mouse in many ways would seem just to be a smaller version of the rat, the smaller size indirectly has added a confounding factor to interpretation of metabolic studies. The reason is that the environmental temperatures unde...