Endocrine Abstracts

Endocrinology came to its third revolution in the field of hormone determination. As radioimmunoassays in the 60s paved the way to the knowledge of modern endocrinology, and as automated immunoassays in the 70s linked analytical measurement to the clinical practice, nowadays liquid chromatography – tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) represents the evolution of the high-throughput approach, typical of automated platforms, toward the high reliability and specificity o...

During the last few years, the endocannabinoid system has emerged as a relevant topic in the scientific community. Many different regulatory actions have been attributed to endocannabinoids, and their involvement in several pathophysiological conditions is under intense scrutiny. Cannabinoid receptors first discovered as the molecular targets of the psychotropic component of the plant Cannabis sativa, participate in the physiological modulation of many central and peripheral f...

Tissue inflammation is usually transient but in diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) inflammation persists. It remains unclear why inflammation persists in some tissues and not in others. Recent studies have shown that stromal cells such as fibroblasts play a pivotal role in determining this persisitance. We have hypothesized that glucocorticoid (GC) activation via the enzyme 11beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11beta-HSD1) within fibroblasts plays a key role in ...

Increasing evidences indicate that brown adipose tissue (BAT) functional activity is reduced during obesity. The nature of this deficit in BAT function, however, is still poorly understood. To analyze whether insulin function in the BAT is altered during obesity, we studied the in vivo metabolic activity of BAT by PET/CT imaging and euglycaemic hyperinsulinemic clamp in lean and diet-induced obese mice. Three groups of mice were analyzed after administration of different diet ...

The aim of this epidemiologic study, performed in a wide population of high-school students in Northern Italy, was to obtain an unbiased estimate of the prevalence of hyperandrogenic states in adolescents and young females.2052 female students, aged 15–19 years, were consecutively contacted. 939/2052 (45.8%) refused to participate in the study, but 431 of the 939 non-participants (45.9%) agreed to fill out a brief questionnaire aimed to broadly asse...

Background and aim: Epicardial fat (EF) is a metabolically active organ as well as visceral fat (VF). EF has been recognized as a potential additional marker of cardiac risk in obesity and type 2 diabetes. This study wants to assess the relation between EF and VF and the correlation with nutritional and hormonal parameters.Material and Methods: Fifty-nine overweight/obese women were enrolled in the study. All women underwent anthropometric measurements, ...

Congenital morphological alteration of pituitary gland is a rare disease often associated with isolated or multiple hormonal deficiency. So far only few genes have been shown to be implicated in a small number of these cases.Aim of this study was to evaluate putative genetic alteration by an array-based comparative genomic hybridization (array-CGH) in 19 adulthood patients, 16 males and 3 females, affected by congenital morphological alteration of the pi...

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is an insulin sensitive organ having a very high uptake of glucose per gram of tissue. The role of insulin on glucose uptake in BAT is still poorly understood, moreover, it is not clear whether BAT insulin function is compromised with obesity. We used a small animal PET/CT imaging approach to analyse insulin function in vivo in lean and obese mice using a glucose analogue PET tracer (18F-FDG). Three groups of mice were analysed afte...

Insulin-like factor 3 (INSL3), a member of the relaxin-insulin family, is produced in the Leydig cells and at reduced levels in ovarian thecal cells. As ovaries from most of PCOS are characterized by an hyperplasia of the theca interna, we hypothesized that INSL3 could be overproduced in PCOS women and therefore that circulating levels of this hormone could became a new marker for the syndrome. Forty lean and obese women with PCOS and 20 controls comparable for age and weight ...

Background: Subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (SCS) is defined as alterations in hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis without classic signs or symptoms of glucocorticoid excess. It is still controversial whether SCS leads to metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, and if the degree of subclinical hypercortisolism may predict these clinical outcomes.Aim: To evaluate the prevalence of hypertension, type-2 diabetes (T2D), coronary heart disease (C...