Endocrine Abstracts

For the last ten years, genomic approaches have led to important discoveries in adrenocortical tumors, unraveling mechanisms of tumorigenesis and autonomous hormone secretion. Autonomous aldosterone secretion in primary aldosteronism is now seen as induced by abnormal intra-cellular calcium signaling in glomerulosa cells, related to somatic mutations. The most common affects KCNJ5, coding for a membrane channel. A clinical trial with macrolides -impacting this channel- is ongo...

Primary aldosteronism (PA) has a prevalence of 5–15% in the general population with hypertension and patients with PA display an increased frequency of target organ damage and cardiovascular damage than patients with hypertension with matched cardiovascular risk profiles. The unilateral and bilateral forms of PA are treated differently usually surgically (unilateral PA) or by antagonism of the receptor for aldosterone (bilateral PA). Medically-treated patients with PA hav...

Background: Patients with adrenal incidentaloma (AI) and autonomous cortisol secretion (ACS) show a high prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and an increased prevalence and incidence of cardiovascular events. Furthermore, some recent data suggest that in these patients, the cardiovascular mortality is also increased. Unfortunately, to date, the diagnosis of ACS is still a matter of debate, and, therefore, it is still not possible to reliably predict the effect of the rec...