Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Cushing’s Syndrome (CS) has been associated with bone mass abnormalities and with an increased risk of osteoporotic fractures.Objective: Evaluate the effect of treatment on the 10-year probability of fracture predicted by FRAX® and on the overall bone profile, in patients with CS.Patients and Methods: We evaluated 36 patients (6 M, 30 F, 12 post-menopausal, mean-age 43.6±13.5), 22 with Cushin...

BACKGROUND: The determination of Night Salivary Cortisol (NSC) is a useful survey in the screening for hypercortilosism. Study data about its usefulness, even when different methods of dosage are used, are anyway scarce.OBJECTIVE: To compare the diagnostic performance in the NSC dosage of the chemiluminescence method (CLIA) and of mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS).METHODS: Saliva samples were taken at 11:00 pm in 36 healthy volunteers a...

Introduction: Male sexual behaviour is deeply influenced by the endocrine system. However, few data are available on low cortisol serum levels and sexuality.Subjects and methods: In order to investigate the sexual function in 12 men before and during replacement treatment for Addison disease (AD), we performed sexual and psychological evaluations before replacement therapy (‘baseline’) and at least 8 weeks after complete recovery from cortisol ...

Adrenocortical Cancer (ACC) is characterized by an increased production of insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) and by estrogen receptor (ER) α up-regulation. Aim of this study was to define IGF2 and estrogen signaling interactions in ACC, in order to give new indications for a better therapy. To this aim we used H295R cells and human ACC tissues which display common features: IGF2 activation of downstream effector pathways and over-expression of estrogen-related genes inc...

Introduction: Acromegalic patients have an increased risk of developing colorectal neoplasms (CN). A common polymorphism (C677T) in gene coding for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR), a key enzyme in folate metabolism and in DNA synthesis, reparation and methylation, has been associated with CN risk in general population, but its role in acromegalic patients has never been explored yet.Aim: To investigate the contribution of MTHFR C677T polymorp...