Endocrine Abstracts

Nonfunctioning pituitary macroadenomas are benign tumors, characterized by the clinical and biochemical absence of hormonal overproduction. Clinical symptoms are mainly caused by mass effects of the tumor. The main symptoms are pituitary insufficiencies, visual field defects, decreased visual acuity and headache. For nonfunctioning adenomas with a diameter of less than one cm no treatment is necessary. In patients with a nonfunctioning macroadenoma without visual field defects...

The first-line therapy of Cushing’s disease (CD) is pituitary surgery, whereas pituitary radiotherapy and bilateral adrenalectomy represent alternative treatments for patients not cured by surgery. Medical therapy has a minor role in the management of CD, and it is mainly based on the use of two different categories of drugs, the adrenal-blocking drugs, which act at the adrenal level, and the neuromodulatory drugs, which act at the pituitary level. These drugs are not usu...

Cushing’s disease (CD) is often severe and debilitating and is caused by a POMC-expressing corticotrope tumour autonomously secreting ACTH to cause chronic hypercortisolism. Untreated CD is associated with excess mortality. The mainstay of management remains transsphenoidal surgery, but the overall long-term remission rate is a disappointing 55–60%. Compared to surgery for other states of pituitary hormone hypersecretion, there is an excess of new hypopituitarism, it...

Chronic exposure to hypercortisolism significantly impacts on patient’s health and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). We developed a disease-generated questio-nnaire to evaluate HRQoL in Cushing’s syndrome (CS) (CushingQoL); in 125 (104 females) patients recruited in Spain, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Italy, clinical and hormonal data were collected and correlated with results of the generic SF-36 questionnaire, a question on self-perceived general heal...