Endocrine Abstracts

Adrenocortical carcinoma is a rare heterogeneous neoplasm with a poor prognosis. Most patients present with symptoms related to steroid hormone excess or presence of an abdominal mass, while less frequently they are diagnosed incidentally during clinical exploration for other causes. In children, adrenocortical tumors are most commonly found associated with mutations of the TP53 tumor suppressor gene and have the highest incidence in southern Brazil. Several clinical and patho...

Adrenocortical cancer (ACC) is a rare and challenging malignancy for clinicians. The cornerstone of imaging for the diagnosis of ACC or re-evaluation of known ACC is thin-collimation computed tomography (CT) without contrast and after early and late washout of contrast medium. Although size and shape of adrenal lesions must be taken into consideration to differentiate adenomas from other adrenal lesions, it is pre- and post-contrast adrenal lesion density, measured in Hounsefi...

The overwhelming majority of benign lesions of the adrenal cortex (AC) leading to Cushing syndrome (CS) are linked to one or another abnormality of the cAMP signaling pathway. Benign adrenocortical causes of CS include the common and sporadic cortisol-producing adenoma (CPA) and a spectrum of corticotropin (ACTH)-independent, and almost always bilateral, hyperplasias. Macro-hyperplasias are more common among older patients, whereas micro-hyperplasias are frequent among childre...