Endocrine Abstracts

The circulating levels of serum TSH and thyroid hormones represent biochemical phenotypes reflecting thyroid homeostasis. Studying the regulation of biochemical measures related to the thyroid in healthy individuals could prove essential in understanding the pathways that eventually lead to thyroid disease. It is the combined effect of genetic and environmental factors that give rise to these endophenotypes. It has been established that the measures reflecting thyroid homeosta...

Adequate thyroid hormone (TH) levels are essential for normal growth and differentiation, for the regulation of energy metabolism, and for the physiological function of virtually all human tissues. Epidemiological evidence shows that minor variation in TH serum levels, even within the normal range, can have important effects on different TH related clinical endpoints, such as bone mineral density, atrial fibrillation, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular mortality.<p clas...

Autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) is the commonest of the autoimmune disorders. Strong familial clustering supports a hereditary component to the development of disease. However, the pattern of inheritance suggests that many genes with relatively small effect size are contributing to the genetic architecture of both Graves’ disease and autoimmune hypothyroidism. Whilst early candidate gene studies helped to identify some of the major effects conferring risk to AITD, inclu...