This November, Glasgow, UK, hosted the Society for Endocrinology’s annual meeting (SfE BES 2018), which saw endocrinologists from around the world gathering to discuss the latest advances in the field.

The first day opened with a fascinating symposium session on curing diabetes mellitus. Colin Dayan (Cardiff University, UK) outlined the need for immunotherapies for type 1 diabetes mellitus and gave an update on the trials that are currently underway. In addition, advances in clinical islet transplantation and the latest results on low-calorie diets for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus were discussed.

In a symposium session entitled ‘The most important 9 months; impact of maternal health’, Susan Ozanne (University of Cambridge, UK) gave a detailed account of the effects of maternal diabetes mellitus on the child’s health. 1 in 7 births are affected by gestational diabetes mellitus, and fetuses exposed to maternal diabetes mellitus in the womb seem to be at increased risk of cardiometabolic disease as a result of in utero epigenetic effects.

Ursula Kaiser (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA) expertly delivered the first plenary of the conference. Kaiser discussed the neuroendocrine signals that trigger puberty and outlined how the timing of puberty onset can affect the risk of certain diseases (such as obesity and endometrial cancer) later in life.

Robin Peeters (Erasmus Medical Center, Netherlands) gave the Pitt-Rivers lecture, in which he discussed defining optimal thyroid function. Peeters outlined the challenges of defining thyroid functions in a range of situations, including during pregnancy; the fetus is dependent on maternal thyroxine, so maternal thyroid dysfunction can result in negative pregnancy outcomes, such as a preterm birth. On the final day of the conference, Maria-Christina Zennaro (INSERM, France) gave the European Medal Lecture on the molecular mechanisms of primary aldosteronism, which occurs in 11% of patients with hypertension.

SfE BES 2018 was a very enjoyable meeting, and I look forward to SfE BES 2019, which will be in Brighton, UK.