Endocrine Abstracts

Graves' disease is characterised by a T and B cell lymphocytic infiltrate in the thyroid which can all but disappear after antithyroid drug treatment. The intrathyroidal lymphocytes are a major site of autoantibody synthesis and the disappearance of this population with treatment indicates a direct role for antithyroid drugs in modulating the immune response. The cytokine profile of the infiltrating lymphocytes is a mixture of TH1 and TH2, and altering the balance between thes...

Autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) clusters in families pointing, at least in part, to a genetic basis for disease. Subjects with AITD and other family members also have an increased risk for the development of other autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes (TID) and rheumatoid arthritis suggesting the involvement of general autoimmunity genes. In common with other autoimmune diseases the HLA region was the first cluster of genes to be reported to be associated with AITD. Mo...

Glycoprotein hormone receptors (TSHr, LH/CGr, FSHr)are rhodopsin-like G protein-coupled receptors with a large extracellular N-terminal portion containing leucine rich repeats, responsible for hormone recognition and binding. We have relied on spontaneous gain-of-function mutations in both the serpentine and LRR portions of the receptors to further explore the structure-function relationships of this family of receptors.ECTODOMAIN. From the observation i...

Recent advances in treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors with selective tyrosine kinase inhibitors have generated interest in identifying other cancers that could be approached with similar strategies. Cancers derived from follicular (papillary thyroid cancer; PTC) and parafollicular thyroid C cells (medullary thyroid cancer; MTC) represent paradigms of solid neoplasms in which tumor initiation events are well defined, and involve activa...