Endocrine Abstracts

Management of Graves’ orbitopathy (GO) is a challenge, and 30–50% of patients are eventually dissatisfied with medical treatment outcome. GO natural history is poorly understood, but some patients experience a progression of GO over time. Thus, prevention of development/progression by abolishing risk factors (e.g. smoking, thyroid dysfunction) is important. The recent results of a randomized clinical trial (RCT) carried out by the EUGOGO group showed that selenium (s...

The natural history of thyroid eye disease (TED), the most frequent extrathyroidal manifestation of Graves' disease, is not completely understood, nor it is clear whether treatments for concomitant hyperthyroidism can influence it. Neither thionamides nor thyroidectomy appear to be disease-modifying treatments. What about radioiodine (RI) therapy? Results are conflicting, owing to selection bias, nonstandardized ocular evaluation, and the retrospective and uncontrolled feature...

Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHP) and growth hormone deficiency (GHD) are both associated with alterations of bone metabolism.GH secretion is frequently impaired in PHP patients; thus GH/IGF-I system alterations could be involved in the pathogenesis of osteoporosis.In the present study 50 post-menopausal women with PHP were evaluated by GH response to GH-releasing hormone (GHRH)+arginine (ARG) test and femoral neck bone mineral den...

Recently, we have reported a few cases of acute liver damage in patients with Graves’ ophthalmopathy (GO), during or following high dose intravenous (iv) glucocorticoid (GC) pulse therapy. In the present study we analyzed retrospectively liver enzymes (LE) in 294 consecutive patients with GO who underwent ivGC. LE were measured before or during ivGC, and in 91 patients also within 6 months after ivGC. An asymptomatic increase in LE (AST peak: 67–88 U/L, ALT peak: 75&...