Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Patients with acromegaly have an increased fracture risk, particularly vertebral fractures. Growth hormone (GH) excess, and the related increase of IGF-1 levels, have been shown to impair bone microarchitecture more than bone density. Therefore, the assessment of trabecular bone score (TBS) has been recommended beside standard dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). The calcaneal quantitative ultrasound (QUS) is less expensive and more accessible compared to DXA,...

Cushing’s Disease (CD) is severe clinical condition due to an ACTH-secreting pituitary tumor. Here we present the case of a 25-years old male who came to our attention for hypertension, moon face, acanthosis nigricans, abdominal purple striae and central obesity. The diagnosis of CD was based on the presence of high plasma cortisol after dexamethasone suppression test and elevated urinary free cortisol levels (UFC, 6-fold higher the upper limit of normality (ULN)). The pi...

The impact of GH/IGF-1 levels on skeletal muscle in patients with acromegaly is still matter of debate. Recently, temporal (TMT) and masseter muscle thickness (MMT) have emerged as reliable indicators of muscle mass, as well as patients’ functional status/prognosis in various clinical context – especially in the oncologic setting. This study aims to investigate the potential correlations between TMT/MMT and patients’ demographic and clinical characteristics. A r...

Introduction: Immunohistochemistry (IHC) of somatostatin receptor subtype 2 (SST2) is a predictive factor for first-generation somatostatin receptor ligand (fg-SRL) response in acromegaly patients. A semi-quantitative immunoreactivity score, IRS, has been proposed as the gold-standard to evaluate SST2 IHC expression. Recently, our group developed a quantitative method to determine SST2 expression using an open-source digital image analysis (DIA...

Over the last two years, COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown have exerted a remarkable psychological burden in the general population. Such an impact is supposed to be even worse in acromegaly, known to induce a severe psychological impairment due to its somatic disfigurements and systemic comorbidities. The current observational study aimed at investigating the impact of COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown on psychological health in acromegalic patients as compared to non-acromegalic h...