Top Endocrine Publications of 2011: The Canine and Feline Pituitary Gland

I know that many of you are very busy and may have trouble keeping up with the latest research studies and publications on issues concerning companion animal endocrinology. Therefore, I’ve compiled a fairly extensive list of some of the best clinical endocrine papers written last year (in 2011), and I’ll be sharing these with you over the next few weeks.

You may ask — why 2011 now? The year 2012 is almost over! Well, you are correct (I'm late with this series of posts). Next year I promise to get my annual lists of endocrine publications out sooner, hopefully starting in February of 2013.

For now, we are going to start off with papers that deal with the theme of diagnosis and treatment of pituitary problems in dogs and cats.

Listed below are 11 research papers written in 2011 that deal with a variety of pituitary gland topics of issues of clinical importance in dogs and cats.

These range from the use of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) measurement and MRI imaging for diagnosis of acromegaly in cats (1,5) to studies of factors that influenced IGF-1 secretion in dogs (4,9); from a report of diabetes insipidus (DI) in a cat with CNS lymphoma (6) to a study of the iatrogenic DI that develops in dogs after transsphenoidal surgery for Cushing's disease (8); from a study of pituitary MRI imaging of dogs with Cushing's disease (7) to a new potential medical therapy for this disease (2); from a genetic study of German shepherd dogs with pituitary dwarfism to a report of a dog with hypopituitarism that resulted from lymphoplasmacytic hypophysitis and lead to acute death (11).

References:

1. Ciftci G, Yarim GF. Evaluation of IGF-I levels and serum protein profiles of diabetic cats and dogs. J Vet Sci 2011;12:325-331. 
2. Fukuoka H, Cooper O, Ben-Shlomo A, et al. EGFR as a therapeutic target for human, canine, and mouse ACTH-secreting pituitary adenomas. J Clin Invest 2011;121:4712-4721. 
3. Gomez NV, Castillo VA, Gisbert MA, et al. Immune-endocrine interactions in treated and untreated cats naturally infected with FIV. Vet Immunol Immunopathol 2011;143:332-337. 
4. Greer KA, Hughes LM, Masternak MM. Connecting serum IGF-1, body size, and age in the domestic dog. Age (Dordr) 2011;33:475-483. 
5. Posch B, Dobson J, Herrtage M. Magnetic resonance imaging findings in 15 acromegalic cats. Vet Radiol Ultrasound 2011;52:422-427. 
6. Simpson CJ, Mansfield CS, Milne ME, et al. Central diabetes insipidus in a cat with central nervous system B cell lymphoma. J Feline Med Surg 2011;13:787-792. 
7. Taoda T, Hara Y, Masuda H, et al. Magnetic resonance imaging assessment of pituitary posterior lobe displacement in dogs with pituitary-dependent hyperadrenocorticism. J Vet Med Sci 2011;73:725-731. 
8. Teshima T, Hara Y, Taoda T, et al. Central diabetes insipidus after transsphenoidal surgery in dogs with Cushing's disease. J Vet Med Sci 2011;73:33-39. 
9. Tvarijonaviciute A, Tecles F, Carillo JM, et al. Serum insulin-like growth factor-1 measurements in dogs: performance characteristics of an automated assay and study of some sources of variation. Can J Vet Res 2011;75:312-316. 
10. Voorbij AM, van Steenbeek FG, Vos-Loohuis M, et al. A contracted DNA repeat in LHX3 intron 5 is associated with aberrant splicing and pituitary dwarfism in German shepherd dogs. PLoS One 2011;6:e27940. 
11. Wolfesberger B, Fuchs-Baumgartinger A, Schwendenwein I, et al. Sudden death in a dog with lymphoplasmacytic hypophysitis. J Comp Pathol 2011;145:231-234.