Endocrine Abstracts

Mild hypothyroidism is a heterogeneous and frequent disorder in the general population that is due to autoimmune disease in most of the cases. TSH resistance is considered a rare genetic disease due to germline loss-of-function TSHR mutations. However, TSHR mutations have been mainly searched in patients with large TSH elevations and their actual prevalence among patients with mild TSH elevations (as those found in mild hypothyroidism) is so far unknown. In this study, we eval...

Although 20% of follicular neoplasms are papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), their cytological diagnosis is not diagnostic. A different profile of gene expression between malignant and benign thyroid tumors has been reported. Aim of this study was to identify a gene expression profile to be used in distinguishing malignant from benign thyroid neoplasms. By real-time RT-PCR we analyzed mRNA expression of 6 thyroid differentiation genes (TTF-1, PAX8, TPO, TSHr, NIS and Tg) and 5 ...

The anti-CD20 antibody Rituximab (RTX) induces peripheral B cells depletion. Aim of the present study was to evaluate changes of lymphocytes after RTX therapy, administered at the dosage of 1000 mg twice at 2-week interval, in 10 patients with Graves’ disease, 8 of whom had associated ophthalmopathy (TAO). In all patients, we studied the standard immunophenotypic panel before therapy and monthly for up to 2 years. Total CD20+ (and CD19+) cell depletion was observed after ...

Sunitinib (SU11248) is a multitarget inhibitor of tyrosine-kinases (RTK) recently tested in clinical trials for the treatment of some human cancers. Side effects are mostly represented by asthenia and appear in a dose and time correlated manner. After the unexpected observation of a myxedematous coma in a patient affected with GIST and treated with Sunitinib, we evaluated the effect of this drug on thyroid function in 24 patients treated for GISTs Imatinib resistant. Patients ...

Background: CTLA-4 polymorphisms have been widely examined for their associations with autoimmune thyroid diseases (Graves’ disease [GD] and Hashimoto thyroiditis [HT]) but their relative population effect remains unclear.Methodology/Principal findings: Meta-analyses of group-level data from 32 (n=11.019 subjects) and 12 (n=4.479) published and unpublished studies were performed for the association of the A49G polymorphism with ...

Soybean diet could involve in the development of goitre according to antithyroid effects of isoflavones. Isoflavones from Soybean could induce not only inhibition of thyroid peroxidase (TPO) catalyzed reactions but they are allergens for patients suffering from atopic or autoimmune diseases. Two hundred-sixty patients with thyroid autoimmunity (150 with Graves’ disease, 110 with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis) were investigated for the sensitization against Soybean. Allerge...

Background: Thyroid hormones are important for normal fetal development. The aim of this prospective study was to explore whether thyroxine treated pregnant women with hypothyroidism are adequately thyroxine substituted during pregnancy.Material and method: During the years 1997–2002 119 pregnancies in 101 females with thyroid diseases were followed at the Department of Endocrinology. The diagnoses were autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT) with or without h...