Endocrine Abstracts

Different animal models have been used to study the postnatal effect of a prenatal exposure to an androgen excess on the female offspring. We have established a sheep model to test the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment of the PCOS mother may play a role in the etiology of the PCOS. In this regard, our sheep model for the study of PCOS has the advantage that provides mainly an androgenized milieu to the fetus in comparison to pregnant PCOS women who offers a hyperand...

Laser ablation of thyroid nodules has been used for the last two decads (Pacella et al, 2000). Surprisingly, complications are less frequent in patients treated without anesthesia, probably because eventual pain is an useful alarm symptom, leading the operator to repositioning the fiber during the procedure (Pacella et al., 2015).Material and methods: A total of 32 patients were included, without using local anesthesia. Nodules were solid, 5–72 ml v...

Introduction: In most cases, adrenal masses are non-functioning adrenocortical adenomas. On ‘Management of adrenal incidentalomas: European Society of Endocrinology Clinical Practice Guideline’ published in 2016, the experts ‘suggest against repeated hormonal work-up in patients with a normal hormonal work-up at initial evaluation unless new clinical signs of endocrine activity appear or there is worsening of comorbidities’.C...

POEMS syndrome characterized by polyneuropathy, organomegaly, endocrinopathy, monoclonal gammopathy and skin changes is a rare disease that usually presents in the 6th decade. We report a case of a young male in whom the presenting manifestations were mandibular mass, adrenal insufficiency and peripheral polyneuropathy. Clinical case: A thirty-three year old man from Guinea-Bissau was admitted to our hospital with asthenia, weight loss, decreased tactile sensibility with pain ...

: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNETs) are rare neoplasms arising from the endocrine pancreas. The fist line treatment is surgery that is often not curative in the presence of metastatic disease. Therefore, there is an increasing need for medical therapy. Sunitinib is a multi-target receptor tyrosine-kinase (RTK) inhibitor, described as having as main target VEGF receptor, with antitumor and antiangiogenic effects, approved for pNETs medical treatment. This study is aimed...

Finding new preclinical models to study the effects of anticancer drugs is one of the aims of biomedical research. Indeed, testing different in vitro systems can lead to a better understanding of the molecular pathways regulating tumor development and growth, and help to find new therapeutic approaches. This is crucial especially in the settings of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNET), where one of the main drugs approved for medical treatment is Sunitinib, a mult...

Background: Hypercalcaemia due to primary hyperparathyroidism is a rare cause of acute pancreatitis, with a reported prevalence of 1.5–8%.Clinical case: A 25-year-old male patient was referred to the Endocrinology outpatient clinic for hypercalcemia diagnosed in the context of acute pancreatitis. He had medical and surgical pathological antecedents of: clavicle fracture after car accident, cholecystectomy and appendectomy, gastroesophageal reflux di...

Introduction: Multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN) syndromes are rare entities characterized by the occurrence of tumors involving two or more endocrine glands in a single patient. These syndromes are classified as type 1 or 2 according to specific phenotypic characteristics. MEN2 encompasses three different subtypes: MEN2A, MEN2B and familial medullary thyroid carcinoma. More recently a syndrome related to mutations in the CDKN1B gene has been described – the syndrome of m...

Hirata syndrome is a rare cause of spontaneous hypoglycaemia, more prevalent in Japanese population, very infrequent in Caucasian patients. It has been described that it can be triggered by medication with sulfhydryl compounds or α-lipoic acid. A 73-year-old male patient was sent to the Endocrinology Division in December 2015 because he had been presenting with episodes of sweating, palpitations and feeling hungry for 6 months; these symptoms improved when he ate carbohyd...

Insulin resistance is defined as the incapacity of insulin to increase glucose uptake by peripheral tissues (skeletal muscle and adipose tissue principally). This phenomenon is present in different animal models for PCOS by prenatal exposure to androgens. In the PCOS condition, the metabolic pathway of insulin activity is defective in skeletal muscle and adipocyte whereas the activation of steroidogenesis is maintained. The decreased insulin stimulated glucose uptake is due to...