Hypothyroidism is a common disorder, which is mainly treated in primary rather than secondary care. Once daily thyroxine replacement restores euthyroidism in most patients; some patients, however, remain hypothyroid despite adequate thyroxine replacement. Non-compliance is the most common cause of lack of response to thyroxine treatment. We describe two cases of primary hypothyroidism in which daily thyroxine treatment did not restore biochemical euthyroidism but once weekly thyroxine treatment was successful. In addition we review the evidence and discuss the differential diagnosis of lack of response to thyroxine treatment. Once weekly thyroxine treatment can be a safe, well-tolerated, and effective therapy for patients with non-compliance.

The development of Grave's ophthalmopathy (GO) following radioiodine (RI) treatment for Grave's thyrotoxicosis, though controversial, is well described. The development of ophthalmopathy following RI treatment for toxic nodular goitre is much less recognised. We report a 49 year-old female patient who developed thyrotoxicosis and GO after receiving RI treatment for toxic nodular goitre and we also review the relevant literature.

BackgroundBiomarker discovery datasets created using mass spectrum protein profiling of complex mixtures of proteins contain many peaks that represent the same protein with different charge states. Correlated variables such as these can confound the statistical analyses of proteomic data. Previously we developed an algorithm that clustered mass spectrum peaks that were biologically or technically correlated. Here we demonstrate an algorithm that clusters correlated technical aliases only.ResultsIn this paper, we propose a preprocessing algorithm that can be used for grouping technical aliases in mass spectrometry protein profiling data. The stringency of the variance allowed for clustering is customizable, thereby affecting the number of peaks that are clustered. Subsequent analysis of the clusters, instead of individual peaks, helps reduce difficulties associated with technically-correlated data, and can aid more efficient biomarker identification.ConclusionsThis software can be used to pre-process and thereby decrease the complexity of protein profiling proteomics data, thus simplifying the subsequent analysis of biomarkers by decreasing the number of tests. The software is also a practical tool for identifying which features to investigate further by purification, identification and confirmation.

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CASE REPORTA 26-year-old female presented with 5-year history of episodic muscle weakness, abdominal cramps and facial paraesthesia. She had 2 hospital admissions elsewhere within 6months with severe hypokalaemia (1.9mmol/L). She was started on Lamotrigine for epilepsy 7 years ago and changed to Levetiracetam in October 2010 following further seizures. She is now seizure-free for over 5 years. Her potassium levels before and after Levetiracetam are shown in Table 1.She had an uneventful childhood. She had no osmotic or urinary symptoms, denied diuretic, laxative, excessive alcohol/liquorice ingestion. No relevant family history. Her body mass index is 22.3, blood pressure 103/55mmHg. Physical examination was unremarkable. Biochemical evaluation is as shown in Table 2. Her genetic screen is awaited.