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Recent in-depth features from Endocrine Today
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Each month in its cover story, Endocrine Today offers comprehensive reporting on issues of interest to practicing endocrinologists, diabetes educators and other clinicians.
Find stories from this year below and others by clicking Current Issues on the ribbon above and selecting a date from the dropdown menu.
Microbiome’s ‘untapped extra genome’ may hold clues to prevent, treat diabetes
Microbiome researchers are only beginning to understand the greater influence of gut microorganisms on the human body, which research suggests affect the pathogenesis of conditions ranging from obesity, asthma and cardiovascular disease to type 1 and type 2 diabetes. As new sequencing techniques are enabling a more comprehensive mapping of bacteria in the gut, researchers are discovering that bacterial genomes, and not individual microbes, may hold the clues for targeting diseases like type 2 diabetes.
New discoveries highlight pathways for beta-cell regeneration in type 1, type 2 diabetes
In just the past 2 years, progress has accelerated rapidly in the field of beta-cell regeneration. The findings could potentially offer a cure for type 2 diabetes and may even hold promise for people with type 1 diabetes.
Providers, regulators explore type 2 therapies for type 1 diabetes
For the first time in more than a decade, noninsulin therapies specifically indicated for type 1 diabetes may be on the horizon, but questions loom regarding their safety and efficacy.
‘Pathbreaking’ osteoporosis therapy offers new option, but treatment challenges remain
The FDA in April approved romosozumab (Evenity, Amgen), a humanized monoclonal antibody that targets sclerostin, for the treatment of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women at high risk for fracture. The agent promises to be a game changer, according to some experts. Yet major challenges in osteoporosis care remain.
In obesity, growing CV risk burden demands cross-specialty collaboration, new solutions
Adults with obesity have greater lifetime risk for CV morbidity and mortality and typically have a shorter life span vs. those with a normal BMI. Experts further contend that the bodily stress of excess weight can unmask underlying genetic tendencies that increase CV risk, virtually guaranteeing that a person with obesity will experience some CV effect over his or her lifetime. The management of these multiple metabolic diseases demands collaboration from obesity medicine specialists and cardiologists, according to experts, who must now work together to address a growing health epidemic.
New treatments, advances changing outcomes for radioactive iodine-refractory thyroid cancer
With an estimated incidence of four cases per million population year, thyroid cancer that does not respond to radioactive iodine therapy is rare. For most of those patients, the prognosis is poor, with a 10-year survival rate of 10% from the time metastatic lesions are detected. Until recently, physicians had little to offer patients in the way of treatment. That picture is changing.
New research, recent controversies call vitamin D benefits into question
The idea of “sunshine in a bottle” — vitamin D supplementation — has been promoted as a possible fix for everything from bone and immune system health to depression, dementia and diabetes, and the premise sells. What constitutes the “optimal” level of vitamin D — and what that even means — remain issues of intense debate.