Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Cushing’s syndrome is rare, but assessment of patients with clinical suspicion of Cushing’s and/or adrenal incidentaloma is frequently required. Thus, there is a need for biochemical screening methods that with high sensitivity and specificity identifies or rule out hypercortisolism. Analysis of late night salivary cortisol allows an easy sampling procedure performed at home and is independent of variations in plasma CBG levels. Analysis by liquid chrom...

Background and objectives: Metyrapone has been approved for the treatment of patients with Cushing’s syndrome from all causes, but only few retrospective clinical studies are available. The aim of our study was the prospective assessment of metyrapone as pre-operative treatment.Methods: Before adrenalectomy, 7 patients with ACTH-independent Cushing’s syndrome due to adrenal adenoma were prospectively treated with metyrapone for 3 months, with e...

Introduction: Malignant pheochromocytoma (MPheo) is diagnosed by the presence of invasion of adjacent structures or distant metastasis. Predictive factors of malignancy for pheochromocytoma (Pheo) are not well known.Material and methods: We retrospectively analyzed clinical, biochemical, radiological characteristics as predictors for malignancy in patients with Pheo in two Spanish tertiary hospitals during the past 35 years. We also evaluated time of rec...

Many patients affected by SARS-CoV-2 disease (COVID) have associated comorbidities (arterial hypertension, obesity, diabetes mellitus, thrombophilia) that are also tied to autonomous cortisol secretion. However, the prevalence of diseases of the adrenal glands in COVID patients is presently unknown. Since the visualization of the adrenal glands is almost always available in chest CT performed in patients with suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, the evaluation of adren...

IntroductionAcromegaly is a chronic disease associated with multiple comorbidities and increased incidence of cancer and mortality. The diagnosis often takes several years after the onset of symptoms. The costs of acromegaly in Finland are not known. This study aimed to characterize the treatment patterns, healthcare resource utilization, and direct costs of acromegaly in Finland.MethodsAll adult (≥18 y...

Background: Pregnancy loss affects approximately 25% of pregnancies, of which 40% have no detectable chromosome abnormalities and are suspected to be caused by maternal comorbidity. Pregnancy loss has been associated with specific endocrine disorders, e.g. autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD), polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) or diabetes mellitus (DM). Because of the well-described overlap between these endocrine disorders, we hypothesized that pregnancy loss is associated with...

Insulinomas are rare insulin-producing pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours. Most insulinomas are non-metastatic and can be cured by surgery, but in 10% of the patients insulinomas metastasize, which is associated with a significantly impaired overall survival. As the metastatic potential of an insulinoma cannot be reliably predicted with the current biomarkers, we aimed to evaluate the expression of somatostatin receptors (SSTRs) and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptors (GLP-1Rs) i...

The incidence of Neuroendocrine Neoplasm (NEN) and related carcinoid syndrome (CS) increased markedly in recent decades, and women appear to be more at risk than men. As per other tumors, gender may be relevant in influencing the clinical and prognostic characteristics. Unfortunately, there are no studies designed to answer this question in the literature. The present multicentric study was designed to evaluated gender differences, if any, in clinical presentation and outcomes...

Background: More than 50% of adrenocortical carcinomas (ACC) in adults are associated with cortisol excess that makes tumor management challenging and has a negative impact on patient outcome. Abiraterone acetate (AA) is an irreversible inhibitor of the 17α-hydroxylase/C17, 20-lyase (CYP17 enzyme) that is used in patients with prostate cancer, in whom it leads to suppression of cortisol and androgens. The aim of this study was to assess the activity of AA to control corti...

Background & Objective: Late night salivary cortisol (LNSC) and 1 mg overnight dexamethasone suppression test (DST) are two of the three recommended screening tests for Cushing’s syndrome (CS). The classical DST uses serum cortisol, but analysis of salivary cortisol and cortisone has shown high diagnostic accuracy at DST (1). Salivary cortisol can be analysed with immunoassays, which suffer from variable degree of cross reactivity with other steroids, or with LC-MS/MS...