Endocrine Abstracts

As part of the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre TR-SFB134 we study central insulin effects on hedonic food processing across the life-span. So far, 48 younger participants across a wide weight-range (BMI: 18–38) were investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a hedonic food processing task after receiving intranasal insulin (160UI) or placebo in a cross-over design after an overnight fast. Imaging results during the placebo session re...

For a long time it has been assumed that patients with adrenal insufficiency (AI) can live without any restriction when receiving standard hormone replacement therapy.However, recent evidence indicates that subjective health status (SHS) in patients with primary adrenal insufficiency is significantly impaired at least in a subgroup of patients and that mortality is increased compared to the general population.The observation of imp...

Molecular imaging technologies are emerging tools providing both researchers and clinicians with technologies for non invasive in vivo studies. Steroidogenic enzymes are abundantly and specifically expressed in steroidogenic tissue and represent an interesting target for tissue specific characterization. Iodometomidate is a highly potent inhibitor of cortisol and aldosterone synthesis due to specific and high affinity binding to both CYP11B1- and CYP11B2-enzymes. Our ai...

Quality of life (QoL) is significantly impaired in patients with primary and secondary adrenal insufficiency (AI) irrespective of the glucocorticoid dosing regimen or the currently available glucocorticoid preparation. The impairment of QoL has been particularly attributed to the unphysiological mode of glucocorticoid replacement, which only roughly resembles the physiological profile. In both congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and Addison's disease, failure in cortisol synt...

Objective: Acromegaly is characterized by chronic hypersecretion of growth hormone (GH) with increased concentration of IGF-1. There have been controversial debates over the question whether elevated GH levels indicate high risk of developing colorectal neoplasm. There is no clear guideline indicating the need for colorectal cancer screening for acromegalics. We evaluated the colonoscopic findings in our series of patients to analyze the prevalence of risk. Should patients wit...

Objective: Acromegaly is characterized by chronic hypersecretion of growth hormone (GH) with increased concentration of IGF-1. It is known that patients with acromegaly have a high risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. We evaluated vascular changes by performing echodoppler ultrasonography in our series of patients.Methods: Ultrasonographywas performed on 10 patients within one week after transsphenoidal surgery. The study includes 6 male and 4 fem...

Background: The majority of adrenal incidentalomas are benign and patients can be reassured, but a personalized and multidisciplinary approach is required when dealing with these lesions, since they might be linked with various comorbidities. The aim of our study was to carry out an in-depth analysis of the biochemical workup of adrenal incidentalomas and comparing the results with controls. Methods: 252 patients with an incidentally discovered adrenal a...

Introduction: Polymorphisms of the glucocorticoid (NR3C1) and mineralocorticoid receptor (NR3C2) have been linked to the regulation of HPA-axis and to glucocorticoid sensitivity. We investigated whether NR3C1 and NR3C2 polymorphisms correlate with the occurence of adrenal crises (AC) in patients with primary adrenal insufficiency (PAI).Material and methods: We investigated 100 patients with PAI (70% women, mean age 51±15 years). DNA was extracted fr...

There is experimental evidence that inhibition of the glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) by small molecule inhibitors induces a rapid, CRM1/XPO1-dependent nuclear export of the AR protein in human prostate cancer cell lines. By contrast nucleo-cytoplasmic shuttling of Q641X, a C-terminally truncated AR-mutant, remains unaffected by GSK-3β inhibition. In silico analysis of the AR C-terminus (amino acids [aa] 641-920) predicted two putative NES-sites, l...

Introduction: Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) contributes to fetal tolerance by regulating innate and adaptive immune responses during pregnancy. Our previous results suggested a pregnancy protective effect of hCG through enhancement of regulatory T (Treg) cells and inhibition of dendritic cell (DC) maturation. Here, we aimed to investigate whether hCG contributes to Treg generation by modulating DC phenotype in vitro and in vivo in a murine model.<p c...