Our Focus is on the Messengers – the Hormones

The Endocrinological Laboratory Diagnostics section aims to provide a forum for discussion, continuing education, and scientific cooperation within the DGKL for laboratory physicians, clinical chemists, clinical endocrinologists, basic scientists, and other colleagues interested in hormone diagnostics. Additionally, the section aims to promote, coordinate, and develop concrete initiatives to increase the quality of routine endocrinological diagnostics.

The quantification of hormones in various biological samples remains an indispensable component of diagnostics, as well as therapeutic monitoring in endocrinological diseases. Moreover, the endocrinological laboratory traditionally represents an active research engine for methodological innovations and advancements. The requirements range from developing exotic assays for research projects to optimizing high-throughput procedures for clinical routine analytics. The chemical peculiarities of structurally often very different analytes, as well as the particular dependence of hormone concentrations on pre-analytical conditions and influencing factors, result in a multitude of specific questions that require interdisciplinary collaboration between basic sciences, laboratory, and clinic to answer.

Special Tasks:

• Establishing a network with clinically active endocrinology colleagues in other professional societies as well as with clinical and laboratory diagnostic experts
• Conducting events and continuing education programs jointly with the corresponding sections and working groups of other endocrinology-oriented professional societies.
• Supporting measures to improve the quality of endocrinologically relevant laboratory methods, supporting the establishment of new reference ranges for hormone parameters, solving technical problems, discussing laboratory organization issues as well as economic aspects

Activities:

• Annual workshop to update hormone analytics, interpretation of measurement values, and practical problems in the endocrinological laboratory
• Organization of an international workshop on endocrinological laboratory diagnostics for the Analytika Conference
• Organization of symposia on endocrinological diagnostics within the DGKL annual meeting

Joint workshops with the German Society for Endocrinology and the German Society for Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetology