Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Prostate carcinoma is a recognised yet rare cause of Cushing’s syndrome. This report describes two cases in which Cushing’s syndrome was associated with advanced prostate cancer.Case 1: A 70-year man presented with a very short history of swelling of his face and legs. He was known to have prostate adenocarcinoma with bony metastases. He was hypokalaemic and resistant to standard potassium replacement. He had a Cushingoid appearan...

We report the case of a 53 year old woman with a history of refractory focal epilepsy with complex partial and secondary generalised seizures. She has been on multiple anti-epileptic drugs since childhood. At 42 years of age she was referred to the Endocrinology Department complaining of capital hair loss and hirsutism. At this time her epilepsy was controlled on phenytoin and carbamazepine.A diagnosis of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) was made, wi...

A32 year old lady was admitted with symptoms of palpitations, tremors, insomnia, heat intolerance, weight loss and excessive perspiration for 4 weeks. Worsening of these symptoms with vomiting prompted the admission. She had similar episode 7 yrs ago following the birth of her child when a provisional diagnosis of postpartum thyrotoxicosis was made but lost follow up with in 2 weeks. She works as a carer looking after mentally handicapped children. Her mother suffers from hypo...

BackgroundPreliminary in vivo studies have shown that fatty acid composition of membranes, where insulin receptors are embedded, can provide significant correlations for insulin resistance. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is a member of the n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid family present in the membrane that may modulate insulin action. The aim of the study was to investigate if variation in insulin sensitivity is related to variation in DHA in red blood...

Clinical CaseA 19-year old ethnic Pakistani presented with severe, longstanding hirsutes without virilisation. Menarche had occurred at age 14, following which she had experienced 4-6 periods a year. She had always been “underweight” by UK/WHO criteria and, given a BMI of 16.5 kg.m−2, there were concerns about hypothalamic oligomenorrhoea.InvestigationsFasting glucose 5.5 mmol/L &#...

Antithyroid drug (ATD) resistant thyrotoxicosis raises difficult management issues. We describe three recent cases of apparent refractory thyrotoxicosis.Case 1: A 31 year old woman presented in July 2003 with thyrotoxicosis. Despite treatment with carbimazole (CBZ) 20 milligrams tds, serum free thyroxine (FT4) concentrations remained around 60 picomoles per litre (11-20). In October, CBZ dose was increased to 40 milligrams bd and dexamethasone 2 milligra...

We report two ladies who presented with thyroid dysfunction associated with neck swelling. In both cases within ten days of consultation they developed rapid enlargement of their mass associated with marked swelling of an arm.Case 1. A 63 year old lady developed sudden onset of a thyroid swelling associated with a new diagnosis of primary hypothyroidism . She had lost weight and felt tired. On examination she had a moderately enlarged woody goitre, there was no associated ...

Objective: To compare clinical characteristics in individuals with established Type 1 diabetes mellitus with and without altered hypoglycaemia unawareness (AHA) / severe hypoglycaemia (SH).Methods: Individuals with AHA and/or SH and controls matched for age, sex and duration of diabetes but with no history of AHA or SH were identified from databases of those attending the Newcastle Diabetes centre with Type 1 diabetes. Characteristics were confirmed from...

Introduction: • Vitamin D deficiency is thought to impair insulin action and glucose metabolism.• Migrants who live in Western countries seem to have lower 25(OH)VitD levels, not only from their white counterparts but also from their native populations in their country of origin.Objectives: • We investigated a cohort of predominantly white Greek Caucasian and Bangladeshi immigrant patients with diabetes mellitus in o...

Objective: Thyroid autoimmunity has been proposed as a risk factor for impaired health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL), depression and anxiety, though evidence is still limited. The aim of the current study is to assess the association of thyroid autoimmunity with quality of life in patients with benign thyroid disease.Design: A cross-sectional study was implemented, that included consecutive patients with benign thyroid diseases who visited the outpatie...