Yorkshire Diabetes and Endocrinology Training Days

WASHINGTON --The FDA has approved rosuvastatin (Crestor) for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease, making it the first statin to receive this indication.

A flagon of ale may indeed be a good source of dietary silicon, a recent study showed, but experts say any attempt to link beer drinking to bone health is not based on scientific data.

Estrogen-only hormone replacement therapy is associated with an increased risk of asthma in postmenopausal women, a large prospective observational cohort study showed.

Blocking serotonin production in the intestine might help restore lost bone mass, rather than just preventing further loss like most current osteoporosis treatments, an animal study suggested.

Closed-loop insulin delivery systems can improve overnight blood sugar control and reduce hypoglycemia risk in young patients with type 1 diabetes, researchers have found.

Increases in fasting plasma glucose during childhood (MedPage Today) -- even though levels remain in the normal range -- can predict adult prediabetes and type 2 diabetes later in life, a retrospective cohort study showed.

Missing sections of DNA may have a powerful impact on weight for a small segment of the population, researchers said.

Diabetic patients aren't as concerned about their hypertension as their physicians are, researchers found.

When it comes to predicting chronic disease, body mass index doesn't tell the whole story, according to a population-based study that found elevated risk with obesity and other metabolic risk factors independently.

So-called silent strokes, visible on cerebral MRI scans, predict kidney failure in patients with type 2 diabetes, Japanese researchers said.

As the official clinical journal of the Society for Endocrinology we want to hear your views on Clinical Endocrinology. What you like, what you don’t, what you want to see more/less of – this is your chance to let us know what you want from your journal.

Complete our survey by following the link below and you’re in with a chance of winning a luxurious Fortnum & Mason hamper!

The survey will close on Friday 19 March 2010 and the randomly selected lucky winner of the hamper will be notified by email on Monday 22 March 2010.

Clinical Endocrinology survey

Congratulations to Chung Thong Lim for winning this years Xcel student of the year competition. Currently in his final year of an intercalated degree in medical sciences and endocrinology at Barts and London Medical School, Chung has excelled throughout his academic career and is expected to contribute a huge amount to the field of endocrinology. He received his award at a ceremony in London on 21 January 2010 in front of an invited audience of over 350 people.

Endorsed by the Society for Endocrinology, the conference on "Late Effects in Cancer Survivors" is taking place on 3-4 March 2010 at Cutler's Hall, Sheffield, UK. This conference is aimed at consultants, nurses, associate specialists and training grades, and has been awarded CPD credits by the Royal College of Radiologists. For more information on this conference, please contact the conference secretariat at lateeffects@sheffield.ac.uk, or visit the conference website here where one can also register by downloading an application form.

The deadline for registration is 12 February 2010.

The Society would like to congratulate Dr John Bevan on the award of a Personal Chair in Endocrinology from the Univeristy of Aberdeen.

We are delighted to welcome the following new Chairs of the Society's committees, who take up their posts this month. We look forward to working with them as we continue to progress initiatives for all members.

Professor Graham Williams (Finance Committee)

Mrs Nikki Kieffer (Nurse Committee)

Dr Alia Munir (Young Endocrinologists' Steering Group)

The Society thanks the retiring Chairs Mrs Maggie Carson and Dr Kim Jonas for their substantial contributions to developing services for nurses and young endocrinologists respectively. Professor Michael Sheppard has moved from his position as Society Treasurer to Chairman of the Board of BioScientifica Ltd; we thank him for all he has done as Society Treasurer and Chair of the Finance Committee.

In the UK, the Specialty Certificate Examination is now a compulsory component of assessment for Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) for trainees whose specialist training began in or after August 2007 and trainees are expected to have made their first attempt by the penultimate year assessment.

The next exam takes place on 30 June 2010. Registration for UK centres is open from 29 March to 26 April 2010. The exam is run once per year (usually May/June) so if you are more than halfway through your training, make sure you plan the exam into your assessment timetable. Register early to secure your preferred test centre. When you revise, read broadly and cover the entire curriculum. Further information, including guidance on registration at international test centres, is available at www.mrcpuk.org, or e-mail your query to sce.queries@mrcpuk.org.

Thank you to all who sent in suggestions for medallists. We are delighted to announce that the following have accepted their invitations to speak at the 2011 Society BES meeting:

Dale Medal - Professor E R Simpson (Prince Henry's Inst., Monash University)

Transatlantic Medal - Professor J Kopchick (Edison Biotech. Institute, Ohio University)

Society Medal - Professor G R Williams (Imperial College London)

European Medal - Professor X Bertagna (University of Paris)

Hoffenberg International Medal - Professor P Fuller (Prince Henry's Inst.)

Each year the Society awards two prize lectures to young endocrinologists, one basic science and one clinical, to be given at the Society's annual BES meeting, rewarding up-and-coming endocrinologists with a prestigious platform from which to present their personal research.

This year we would like to congratulate Dr Vicky Smith for her basic science abstract entitled 'PTTG and PBF as targets for augmenting radioiodine uptake in thyroid cancer', and Dr Alia Munir for her clinical abstract entitled 'RNA interference as therapy for Cushing's disease.'

Drs Smith and Munir will present their lectures on Monday 15 March at BES 2010 in Manchester, and will be rewarded with a £2500 honorarium each.

Find out more about the Young Endocrinologists' Prize Lecture here.

The Society for Endocrinology is pleased to announce that its next public event will take place at Edinburgh International Science Festival on Monday 12 April 2010.

Chaired by Professor Richard Sharpe of the University of Edinburgh, the event hopes to provide insights into how hormones control sexual development, and will examine what happens when this balance of chemical signals is disturbed.

Gender: More than X versus Y

The Society for Endocrinology Undergraduate Achievement Awards have been established to encourage excellence in the study of endocrinology by undergraduate students.

Departments are invited to submit applications to the Society for an award to outstanding undergraduates. The award will consist of a £300/yr grant to the department (for three years), and a certificate from the Society to the award winner.

One grant will be available to a department in any three-year period. There will be up to twelve grants available each year, awarded to eligible departments on a first come first served basis.

Applications will only be considered if submitted by a paid up member of the Society for Endocrinology. Applications open on 18 June and close on 16 July 2010.

Further details

BioSciAlliance is an exciting service from BioScientifica that allows members to access a host of services using a single gateway. BioSciAlliance (www.bioscialliance.org) allows you to renew your membership, access abstract management and registration for Society meetings, update your membership profile and interact with fellow members, all using a single website.

Society members can logon to BioSciAlliance using their current membership number and password. Once you are logged on, you can build up your own profile and search for fellow members by geographical location or areas of interest. In addition, BioSciAlliance provides a wealth of educational resources, BioScientifica's world calendar of events and news articles on a range of biomedical specialities.

Communicate; Collaborate; Innovate - logon to BioSciAlliance today.

Logon to BioSciAlliance

The Society has signed up to the National Campaign for Libel Reform. This campaign is being run jointly by Sense about Science, English PEN and Index on Censorship to campaign for reform of English libel laws. This follows on from Sense about Science’s campaign to ensure that English libel laws are not used to silence critical discussion of medical practice and scientific evidence and to discourage debate in the public arena. This campaign was launched in the wake of the case of science writer Simon Singh, who is being sued for libel for an article in The Guardian. The Society urges members to sign the petition at the link below.

Update 18 January 2010 - In the run up to the general election, the National Campaign for Libel Reform is pushing for all parties to make libel reform part of their manifesto. Representatives of the campaign are meeting Jack Straw on 3 February. We need your help showing Mr Straw that wholesale libel reform is a public concern. Please get 10 more people to sign the petition, blog about it and Tweet the link to show him how strong public feeling is.

National Campaign for Libel Reform: sign the petition here.

Sense about Science

Online registration for the Society for Endocrinology National Clinical Cases Meeting 2010 is now open. To register please click here.

The 2010 National Clinical Cases Meeting will take place in the afternoon of 23 February 2010 at the Royal Society of Medicine in London. The meeting will consist of 10 oral communications made up of the highest scoring submitted abstracts and a large number of poster presentations. Further details can be found on the website below. Please direct any enquiries to the conferences team on: +44 (0)1454 642210 or by email at: conferences@endocrinology.org.

National Clinical Cases Meeting 2010

Free Registration

The Society is delighted to make available a limited number of places where delegates will not be required to pay the registration fee for this meeting. These free places are only available to those who have not yet started their specialist training in endocrinology (medical students, FYs, CTs/ST1and2). Consultants should submit applications on behalf of suitable candidates to: conferences@endocrinology.org. Because the number of these places is limited, free registration will be awarded on a first come, first served basis.

Endocrine-Related Cancer, the established global forum for basic, translational and clinical research on hormones and cancer has launched continuous publication online. NEW ARTICLES are published online as soon as they are ready for publication, without waiting for an issue to be compiled. Look out for these NEW ARTICLES throughout January at www.try-erc.org.

NEW ARTICLES published by ERC can now be read and cited faster than ever before, a superb new development for authors and readers sharing knowledge worldwide.

Authors accepted manuscripts (Accepted Preprints) continue to appear within 24 hours of acceptance.

ERC is the most widely read journal devoted to hormones and cancer with an impact factor of 5.236 and a 5-year impact factor of 5.827.

Find out more about ERC at www.try-erc.org

We are pleased to announce that Society for Endocrinology Clinical Update 2010 will take place in Bristol on 8-10 November 2010. Further details will be available shortly at the link below.

SfE Events

Have you got the write stuff? The Undergraduate Essay Prize is back with a £1000 prize on offer for the winning entry as well as runners up and highly recommended prizes. Essays should be on a topical aspect of endocrinology and extra credit will be given for readability and originality.

Further details and conditions of entry are available at the website below. If you have any questions, please email grants@endocrinology.org. The closing date for applications is 1 March 2010. Please pass this on to your students and encourage them to apply.

Essay Prize website

The Society for Endocrinology offers a number of grants which members can apply for throughout the year. These include: clinical department visit grants, sponsored seminars and poster session grants, and conference travel grants. For details on how to apply for Society grants, please visit the website below. If you have any questions about Society grants, please email: grants@endocrinology.org.

Grants website

The Society offers a number of awards and prizes throughout the year. Prizes are offered at the SfE BES meeting and Clinical Cases meetings for oral and poster presentations, and undergraduates can apply for the Undergraduate Achievement Award and Undergraduate Essay Prize. A Postgraduate Essay Prize is also available on an annual basis. For further details of all these awards and prizes and information on how to apply, please visit the website below.

Prizes and awards website