Endocrine Abstracts

Background: The menstrual pattern is influenced by thyroid hormones directly through impact on the ovaries and indirectly through impact on SHBG, PRL, and GnRH secretion and coagulation factors. Treating thyroid dysfunction can reverse menstrual abnormalities and thus improve fertility.Aim: Elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying the link between thyroid and ovarian function is important for determining the relationship between thyroid status, fe...

Systematic studies on the association of autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT), as pivotal disease and nonendocrine autoimmune diseases (NEAD) are scarce and mostly based only on the presence of circulating autoantibodies. In a large cohort of consecutive outpatients, AIT was diagnosed in 1541 (28.2%) and whenever additional autoimmune disorders were suspected, they underwent further screening. Diagnostic criteria were according with the Consensus Conferences for each suspected autoimm...

Some case report suggested that increased need for thyroxine may occur in overt celiac disease (CD). However, overt CD (with typical gastrointestinal symptoms) only represents 10 to 20% of cases of CD, being the majority represented by the atypical CD and other occult forms, in which extra intestinal symptoms prevail. Few data on the need for oral T4 in patients with occult CD are available. In this study we analyzed the replacement T4 dose in 68 hypothyr...

Autoimmune thyroiditis (AT) may occur as a single disease or associated with further endocrine and non endocrine autoimmune diseases (NEAD). Chronic autoimmune gastritis (CAG) is the more frequently associated NEAD. A prevalent Th1-representative pattern of cytokines and chemokines has been described in isolated autoimmune thyroiditis. However, the behaviour of chemokines when AT is associated with CAG is not known. Aim of the study has been to measure serum levels of CXCL10 i...

Increased need for thyroxine has been described in several gastrointestinal disorders (H. pylori infection, gastric atrophy, celiac disease), even in their occult or symptomless forms. A transitory or stable impairment of gastric acidity, by increasing pH value, seems to interfere with thyroxine availability, highlighting a novel role for the stomach in the following intestinal T4 absorption. Distinctive dissolution profiles of different T4 prepara...

Inhibins A and B, peptides belonging to TGF-ß superfamily, have an ubiquitous antagonist action on activin signalling. In thyroid gland, TGF-ß1 and activin mainly exert an inhibitory action on growth and function. In human thyroid, beside the presence of activin β subunits and its transductional elements (ActRI/II, SMAD), there is no evidence for α subunit expression, an essential component for inhibin A/B gathering (α-ßA/α-ßB), nor for ...