Endocrine Abstracts

Background and Objective: Severe metabolic complications generally manifest at an early age in Berardinelli – Seip congenital lipodystrophy (BSCL) and their management is especially challenging, often requiring prompt pharmacological treatment with insulin-sensitizers, lipid lowering drugs, insulin and eventually metreleptin. Nutritional intervention with low lipid personalized diets is considered by experts a fundamental tool in handling the disease when associated with ...

Background: The classical steroidogenic route to the synthesis of dihydrotestosterone in Leydig cells involves delta-5 and delta-4 precursors. Besides, the “backdoor pathway”, encompassing progesterone metabolites, is gaining increasing interest in fetal development and men pathophysiology. Nowadays, liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is the ideal technique to simultaneously quantify large panels of steroids with elevated sensitivity and specif...

Background: Excess testosterone in PCOS is accompanied by increased levels of other ovarian and adrenal androgens and precursors. Recently, 11-oxygenated adrenal androgens have been postulated as major components of the circulating androgen pool in PCOS. Obesity is strictly connected with androgen excess and with the derangement of hormone circadian rhythmicity. To date, it has not been clarified whether hyperandrogenism in PCOS, either complicated by obesity or not, is accomp...

Background: Many questions concerning polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) remain unsolved, such as the long term evolution of cardiovascular (CV) risk markers and the risk for CV events.Methods: A total of 119 PCOS patients diagnosed in 2009 by NIH criteria at our Unit were evaluated at baseline for cardiovascular risk markers (hypertension, diabetes mellitus-DM, dyslipidaemia, obesity, carotid intima media thickness-cIMT, and epicardial fat thickness-EFT) ...

Background: HIV is associated with decreased bone mineral density (BMD) and decreased muscle mass. Osteoporosis and sarcopenia often co-exist and their onset is multifactorial. Sex steroids play a key role in the homeostasis of bone health and body composition in HIV-uninfected men, but data in MLWH are scanty.Aim: To investigate the frequency of low BMD and sarcopenia and their relationship with gonadal function in MLWH younger than 50.<p class="abs...

Context: Several studies have shown that Trabecular Bone Score (TBS) predicts fractures independently of Bone Mineral Density (BMD) measured with Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA), even in patients with Primary Hyperparathyroidism (PHPT), known to have deteriorated bone microarchitecture. Low TBS values alone are still not considered as a single criterium to recommend parathyroid surgery. Measuring bone quality in patients with PHPT may be helpful to identify a proportion...

Background: Moving from childhood to adulthood is a challenging process for individuals with type 1 diabetes (T1D), transition has been defined as the planned movement from pediatric to adult department.Aim: To assess glucometabolic control, prevalence of autoimmune disorders, and use of glucose sensors in patients with type 1 diabetes after transition to adult care.Methods: We retrospectively evaluated HbA1c, prevalence of patient...

Pituitary adenomas constitute the third most common intracranial neoplasm. Adenoma cells either express no hormone (null cell adenoma) or hormones of different cell lineage. About 1% of pituitary adenomas shows a plurihormonal expression pattern, which may either be attributed to one cell lineage or rarely to different cell lineages. In addition, the development of separate pituitary adenomas may be observed in 0.5–1.5% of surgical specimens and in up to 10% of autopsy ca...

Background and aim: Ovarian hyperandrogenism is a known cause of post-menopausal hirsutism and virilisation, more frequently of a benign nature (e.g. ovarian hyperthecosis, Leydig cell hyperplasia). Bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy delivers both definitive diagnostic and therapeutic results. However, after excluding the presence of a suspicious ovarian mass, the use of GnRH analogues (GnRH-a) offers a valuable therapeutic alternative with cases reporting a sustained response in...

Background: Acylcarnitines and sphingomyelins are key players of lipid metabolism at cytosolic, vesicular and cell membrane level. Their metabolism was found deranged in diseases of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. Little information is available about levels of these compounds in the bloodstream and their circadian fluctuations. Dried blood spots (DBS) allow multiple autonomous and painless collections per day. However, poor biological validation data are available ab...