Endocrine Abstracts

Tolvaptan, an oral antagonist of the vasopressin V2 receptor, has been found to improve hyponatremia in patients with SIAD. We report the case of a 65-years-old male, who developed recurrent episodes of hyponatremia after severe traumatic brain injury, TBI, with polytrauma (CGS=8, decompressive craniectomy, spontaneous breathing by percutaneous tracheotomy). During hospitalization in intensive care unit he resumed alertness and received i.v. hypertonic saline infusion and oral...

The currently curative therapy for pancreatic endocrine tumours (PET), accounting for <3% of pancreatic tumors, is complete surgical resection, which is achieved in the minority of cases. Most tumors are diagnosed in a late stage, especially in endocrine-inactive forms, indicating the need for further medical therapy. The serine–threonine protein kinase C (PKC) family plays central regulatory roles in several cellular processes, including cell proliferation. PKC signa...

Overt hypercortisolism causes reduction in bone mass and density. The effects of subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (SCS) on bone markers and structure are still debated. We therefore studied 56 patients with adrenal incidentaloma: group A=35 (20 F 15 M, age 43–79, mean 64.6±1.5; BMI 29.9±0.9 kg/m2) without evidence of hypercortisolism, and group B=21 (10 F 11 M, age 51–76, mean 63.4±1.9, BMI 28.0±1.2 kg/m2) with SCS (i.e. w...

Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a malignant tumour deriving from parafollicular C cells, with a highly chemoresistant phenotype. Failure of medical therapy has been ascribed, at least in part, to multi drug resistance (MDR1) gene over-expression. MDR1 encodes for a transmembrane glycoprotein, P-gp, which hampers intracellular accumulation of cytotoxic drugs. It has been demonstrated that P-gp expression and function depend on cyclo-oxygenase 2 (COX-2) expression, which is...