Endocrine Abstracts

Glucocorticoid feed-back in pituitary corticotrophs represses POMC transcription and ACTH release. Serum and glucocorticoid-induced kinase 1 (Sgk1) has been identified as an immediate early target of glucocorticoids in many tissues, however its expression and function in corticotrophs are unknown.We show here that Sgk1 is present in the human pituitary gland at both mRNA and protein levels. Double-immunohistochemistry revealed that Sgk1 is expressed in d...

Copeptin is a stable AVP marker and stoichiometrically released with AVP. It closely reflects changes in water balance. Its stimulation in severe stress has recently has been suggested in various pathophysiological conditions including myocardial infarction and stroke. Paraneoplastic stimulation of AVP/copeptin is expected in patients with cancer leading to hyponatraemia due to SIADH.Here, we evaluated copeptin levels in 50 patients with hyponatraemia du...

Background: Hypopituitarism after traumatic brain injury (TBI) is considered to be a prevalent condition, and may affect quality of life (QoL) and cognitive function. However, the prevalence of hypopituitarism differs considerably among reported studies due to differences in definitions, endocrine assessments of hypopituitarism, and confounding factors, like timing of evaluation and the severity of the trauma.Aim: To evaluate the prevalence of hypopituit...

A common polymorphic variant of the GH receptor (exon-3 deletion, d3GHR) has been linked with increased response to recombinant human GH (rhGH) in some, but not all, GH deficient (GHD) and non-GHD patients. Aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the GHR genotype on the phenotype of GHD adults and on the metabolic effect of short- and long-term rhGH therapy, with particular focus on glucose homeostasis (1 year: n=100 and 5 years: n=50). Effects of rhGH...

We have recently explored the involvement of ghrelin in the eating response to stress in humans and found that ghrelin levels increased in parallel to cortisol after a standardized psychological stress. To further elucidate this interaction, we examined the ghrelin response to pharmacological manipulation of the HPA axis.Following approval from the local Ethical Committee, six lean, healthy male volunteers were examined on two occasions. Blood samples we...

Methods: We undertook an assessment of patients which were diagnosed with or had their first symptoms of pituitary tumor before the age of 30 and had tumor diameter more than 1 cm without familial history of pituitary adenomas. In patients that consented to genetic analysis, germline mutations in the AIP gene were sought.Results: The study population consisted of 164 patients (61 prolactinomas, 84 somatotropinomas, 16 non-secreting tumors, two pat...