EUROPEAN ENDOCRINOLOGY – VOLUME 10 ISSUE 2 – AUTUMN 2014

It is my pleasure to provide a foreword for this issue of European Endocrinology, which coincides with a landmark 50th annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Vienna. This meeting promises to be a comprehensive international update on the pathophysiology and treatments of type 1/2 diabetes and its complications. […]

Type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease, therefore, an escalation of therapy is often needed during the course of this chronic and incurable condition in order to prevent late complications associated with poor metabolic control.

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a relatively rare disease, but attracts much attention as it is a lifelong disease that mainly starts during childhood, thus condemning children to the daily administration of subcutaneous insulin injections, accompanied with a need for painful finger sticks in order to measure glucose levels and an often restrictive lifestyle. Patient […]

Theoretical Background

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of blindness among working-aged adults around the world.1 Despite the significance of this problem, and the rising prevalence of diabetes, notably in emerging Asian countries, such as India and China,2,3 there are few precise contemporary estimates of the worldwide prevalence of DR, particularly severe visionthreatening stages of the […]

Diabetes imposes a substantial burden on societies worldwide: approximately 25 million individuals in the US have diabetes, of which more than 95 % is type 2.1 Furthermore, its incidence is increasing, a further 79 million adults in the US have pre-diabetes and one in three US adults could have diabetes by 2050.1 In addition, the […]

Insulin Use – Trends and Barriers Of “theoretically unlimited efficacy”: the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) summarise one advantage of insulin for the treatment of type 2 diabetes (T2D).1 Counterpoint disadvantages, most prominently hypoglycaemia, are diminished with the use of insulin analogues in comparison with human […]

Obesity is a global epidemic and represents a substantial health and economic burden.

For several decades human body weight has been increasing worldwide to a point where the prevalence of overweight and obese adults and children has been described as epidemic or even pandemic.1–6 The statistics are alarming: in 2005 1.6 billion people worldwide were overweight and 400 million people were obese (one in ten adults).

Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy, being responsible for approximately 95 % of endocrine cases and 1.5 % of all cancers.1 Its incidence has increased substantially in recent decades and has been rising by 6.4 % per year over the past 10 years.1 This is due to a combination of an apparent increase […]

Summary An interesting case of persistent hypercalcaemia of primary hyperparathyroidism (pHPT) resistant to medical management for more than 5 years, who demonstrated a dramatic response to the first dose of denosumab with a significant and persistent drop in her level of calcium, from a baseline of 3 mmol/l to 2.7 mmol/l over a period of […]

Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) and cancer-related hypercalcaemia are the most common causes of hypercalcaemia and PHPT is the most common cause of hypercalcaemia in outpatients. An autonomous overproduction of parathyroid hormone (PTH) leading to hypercalcaemia, which is not downregulated by the calcium-sensing receptor, is the pathophysiological basis of the disease.1,2

Hypothyroidism is usually a progressive disease that impacts the entirety of bodily functions. As the heart is the main target of thyroid hormone activity, hypothyroidism may precipitate or aggravate heart failure, influencing heart rate and blood pressure (BP) while increasing cardiovascular (CV) stiffness and also cardiomegaly.1,2 Overt hypothyroidism (OH) is therefore associated with heightened CV […]

Arterial Stiffness and Cardiovascular Risk Recently, much emphasis has been placed on the role of arterial stiffness in the development of cardiovascular diseases. In fact, increased arterial wall rigidity has been acknowledged as a major independent risk factor for cardiovascular pathologies,1,2 and is frequently correlated to the onset of adverse cardiovascular events.3,4 Representing a physiological […]