Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Insulinomas are the most frequent cause of hypoglycemia and the most common functional endocrine pancreatic tumors. Whipple triad is often present and should alert to the diagnosis.Case report: A 36-year-old male was admitted in the emergency room with loss of consciousness, diaphoresis and blurred vision, and hypoglycemia (50 mg/dl). The patient recalled recurrent symptoms of diaphoresis, tremors and palpitations, sometimes with loss of co...

Introduction: Thyroid storm is a rare medical emergency with high mortality, which usually results from acute exacerbation of hyperthyroidism. Amiodarone is a highly used class III antiarrhythmic drug and amiodarone-induced thyrotoxicosis is an infrequent effect of this medication, whose treatment may be difficult.Case study: A 20-year old male with congenital cardiomyopathy (Fallot tetralogy and Ebstein anomaly), chronically medicated with amiodarone 20...

Introduction: Radioiodine treatment (RAIT) is an effective definitive treatment for Graves’ Disease (GD) and Toxic Nodular Goiter (TNG). The aim of this study was to analyze demographic and clinical factors affecting the outcome of RAIT in patients with hyperthyroidism.Methods: Retrospective review of patients treated with RAIT for hyperthyroidism. A fixed dose of 10 mCi was administered to patients with GD and 15 mCi to patients with TNG. Treatment...

Introduction: Adrenal insufficiency (AI) is a rare and potentially life-threatening disease. The most common causes are primary adrenal insufficiency (Addison’s Disease), due to an adrenocortical disease, and secondary insufficiency, due to disorders of the pituitary gland. Chronic glucocorticoid replacement is vital and patients should be educated about how to act in acute stress situations, in order to avoid adrenal crisis. Taking this into account, we organized educati...

Background: Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a downstream effector of the PI3K/AKT pathway. It can be activated by diverse stimuli, such as growth factors, nutrients, energy, stress signals and signaling pathways such as PI3K, MAPK and AMPK, in order to control cell growth, proliferation and survival. The active form of mTOR (pmTOR) may form two distinct complexes: mTORC1 that activates S6K1 and 4EBP1 which are involved in mRNA translation; and mTORC2 that activates PKC...

Osteopontin (OPN) is a matricellular protein highly expressed in cancer cells, which is able to modulate tumorigenesis and metastasis in several malignancies, including follicular cell-derived thyroid cancers (TC). OPN is one of the gene products aberrantly expressed in TC, but the contribution of each OPN isoform (OPNi), named as OPNa, OPNb and OPNc, is currently unknown. This study aims to analyze the expression profile of OPNi in TC tissue samples, correlate its expression ...

Thyroid cancer therapy is based on surgery followed by radioiodine treatment of tumor remnants and metastases. The incorporation of radioiodine by cancer cells is mediated by sodium iodide symporter (NIS), normally present in thyroid follicular cells’ membrane. We studied the expression of NIS in a series of 229 thyroid primary tumors using real time PCR and immunohistochemistry, and searched for possible associations between NIS expression and clinicopathological feature...