Endocrine Abstracts

ITT is the test of reference for the diagnosis of adult GH deficiency (GHD), but also GHRH in combination with arginine (ARG) or GH secretagogues (GHS) are considered equally reliable tests. Testing with GHS alone is, anyway, a potent stimulus exploring the integrity of hypothalamic pathways controlling somatotropic function.We therefore aimed to clarify the diagnostic reliability of testing with ghrelin, the natural GHS.We studied...

Context. The routine measurement of serum calcitonin (CT) has been proposed for patients with nodular goiter (NG), to detect unsuspected medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) before surgery. Objective To assess the prevalence of hypercalcitoninemia and MTC in NG patients; to compare the ability of CT measurement and fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) to predict MTC; to identify age groups of NG patients who should be better candidates than others to undergo routine measurement...

Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is usually treated with surgery, external hyperfractionated radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. However, because of the aggressiveness of this type of cancer, these treatments allow about 6-10 months of median survival. Therefore, it is challenging to predict the ATC patient clinical therapy responsiveness. Pazopanib is a multitarget tyrosine kinase inhibitor of VEGF receptors, PDGF, and c-Kit, and its effect in primary human ATC cells (pATC) h...

Hypothyroidism has been traditionally described as a frequent endocrine complication of thalassemic children: in these patients hypothyroidism is mainly of primary origin and not linked to autoimmunity (Mariotti et al., Pediatr Endocrinol Rev 2011). Fewer data are available on the prevalence and nature of this complication in adult age thalassemia. Therefore, we elected to evaluate thyroid function and autoimmunity in a large series of adult patients.<p class="abs...