Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Thyrotropin secreting adenomas (TSHoma) are considered to be rare pituitary tumours. However, improvements in imaging techniques and greater use of more sensitive thyrotropin (TSH) assays has led to a recent increase in the detection rate of TSHomas and, specifically, the identification of more microadenomas. Surgery is considered the mainstay of treatment, however, primary medical therapy with somatostatin analogues is an emerging alternative therapeutic option.</...

Background: Endocrine Society guidelines classify macroprolactinomas as ‘resistant’ if there is failure to normalise prolactin, or to achieve radiological tumour shrinkage of >50%, on standard doses of dopamine agonist. In this context, escalation of treatment to maximal tolerable doses and/or referral for surgery is advised. However, we have recently observed several ‘discordant responders’, where tumour shrinkage lags significantly (>6 months) beh...

Although MRI remains the investigation of choice for pituitary imaging, it does not provide information about ‘functionality’ of lesions (e.g. residual adenoma vs post-surgical scar tissue) and cannot reliably identify all microadenomas.We hypothesised that i) imaging with the PET ligand 11C-methionine, which is taken up at sites of peptide/protein synthesis, would permit more reliable identification of functioning pituitary adenoma ...

Although MRI remains the investigation of choice for pituitary imaging, it does not reliably identify all secretory microadenomas, and cannot always discriminate residual tumour from post-surgical change following hypophysectomy. We hypothesised that i) imaging with the PET ligand 11C-methionine, which is taken up at sites of peptide/protein synthesis, would permit more reliable identification of functioning pituitary adenoma, and ii) co-registration of PET–CT ...

Background: Although MRI remains the investigation of choice for pituitary imaging, it does not provide information about the ‘functionality’ of lesions (e.g. residual adenoma vs post-surgical scar tissue), and cannot reliably identify all microadenomas. These limitations are of particular relevance in acromegaly where clinical and biochemical evidence of disease activity mandates (further) treatment.Methods: We hypothesised that i) imaging wit...