Hormone, Diabetes and Metabolism Terms

Redesigning a hormone that survives only minutes into one lasting hours is what turned somatostatin into a usable medicine.

Too much thyroid hormone.

A laboratory-made relative of testosterone shaped to build muscle with less of the male hormone effect.

A chemical process in which oxygen is used to make energy from carbohydrates (sugars).

A rare cancer that forms in the islets of Langerhans cells (a type of cell found in the pancreas).

An abnormal mass that grows in the beta cells of the pancreas that make insulin.

Among thyroid cancers, papillary carcinoma is the most frequently diagnosed type, arising from hormone producing follicular cells and typically growing slowly.

Scattered nests of cells left over from the developing nervous system, some releasing hormones and some sensing the blood.

A rare cancer that forms in tissues of one or more of the parathyroid glands (four pea-sized glands in the neck that make parathyroid hormone, which helps the body store and use calcium).

Four glands the size of a grain of rice that hold the calcium level in the blood steady from hour to hour.

A substance made by the parathyroid gland that helps the body store and use calcium.

An operation aimed at a gland most people cannot name, usually done because one of the four has grown a benign lump.

Despite the name, the defining problem is hormonal rather than the small follicles that scans pick up, and it reaches well beyond the ovaries.

It blocks the receptor rather than the hormone, so the hormone level in blood rises even as its effects on the body fall away.

A principal metabolite of hexamethylmelamine with antineoplastic activity.

The active metabolite of the nitrogen mustard cyclophosphamide with potent antineoplastic and immunosuppressive properties.

A procedure in which a small amount of radioactive glucose (sugar) is injected into a vein, and a scanner is used to make detailed, computerized pictures of areas inside the body where the glucose…

Short-lived local messengers built from a fatty acid, and the molecules that ordinary painkillers work by shutting down.

Symptoms of this tumor often occur in sudden episodes rather than continuously, reflecting bursts of hormone release rather than a steady excess.

Whether they act like estrogen or against it depends on how much of the real hormone is already in circulation.