Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The classical replacement therapy for hypoadrenalism may expose patients to non-physiologic glucocorticoids levels with negative metabolic consequences. Up to now, one study demonstrated that, as compared to the classical treatment, a modified-release hydrocortisone (MRH), improves weight, blood pressure, glycaemic control and QoL in a 3-month follow-up period. Few data are available on the long-term persistence of these benefits.Design/met...

An augmented cardiovascular risk is present in adrenal incidentalomas (AI), as in overt hypercortisolism. Recent studies recommended epicardial fat (EF) thickness as a new marker of visceral adiposity and an indicator of cardiometabolic risk.In this study, we evaluated the possible relationship between EF thickness, indices of left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy and adipocytokines levels in AI.We studied 26 patients with AI (62.3&#17...

Congenital hypothyroidism is frequently associated with congenital cardiac malformations (CCM). Studies in knock-out mice showed that heart and great vessels organogenesis share some nuclear transcription factors with the embryonic thyroid, suggesting that thyroid defects may have a higher prevalence in children with CCM. The present study investigated thyroid function and morphology in 280 children (145 M/135 F, aged 0.3–12 years), affected by CCM (septal defects, ductus...

An increased cardiovascular risk has been described in patients (pts) with adrenal incidentaloma (AI), similarly to pts with overt Cushing’s syndrome (CS). Some echocardiographic abnormalities and alterations in adipokine secretion involved in insulin resistance, inflammation and atherosclerosis have been reported in pts with CS. In this study the possible correlation between echocardiographic parameters and adipokine levels in pts with AI was evaluated.<p class="abst...

Patients (pts) with adrenal incidentaloma (AI) may show an increased incidence of several cardiovascular risk factors, as obesity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia. As previous data suggested that the increased cardiovascular risk in these pts could be in part mediated by alterations of adipokines, this study was aimed to evaluate plasma IL-6, resistin, CT-1 levels in a wide series of pts with AI.Ninety-three pts (42 males; 51 females; ag...

Generously supported by IPSEN)-->A highly polymorphic microsatellite in the IGF-I gene promoter composed of variable cytosine–adenine (CA) repeats (n=10–24) has been linked to IGF-I levels, risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases with conflicting results. Aim of this study was to investigate the impact of this polymorphism on the response to rhGH (mean dose 0.34±0.14 mg/day) in adult GH-deficient (GHD) pa...

Adult GH deficiency syndrome is characterized by visceral obesity, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and is associated with an increased cardiovascular risk. Epicardial adipose tissue, giving its relationship with abdominal visceral adiposity, coronary artery disease, cardiac morphology and function and metabolic syndrome, has been proposed as cardio-metabolic risk indicator. In this study, we evaluated the echocardiographic epicardial fat thickness in 14 patients (8 M and 6 F,...

Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is frequently associated with congenital heart defects (CHD). Thyroid defects may have a higher prevalence in children with CHD as embryonic thyroid gland share nuclear transcription factors with heart and great vessels during organogenesis. We investigated thyroid function in 325 children (165 M/160 F, aged 0.2–15.4 years), affected by CHD. Patients with Down syndrome, recent administration of iodinated contrast agents, low T3 sy...

Abdominal obese (AO) women might have a hyperactivation of the HPA axis. The limitations of previous studies have been often represented by the limited and heterogeneous number of patients enrolled. Our aim was to asses urinary free cortisol (UFC) output during daily and nightly hours in a large cohort of AO women vs. normal weight controls (CT). 107 AO women and 37 CT were enrolled in the study. In basal condition, each subject underwent OGTT, biochemical determinations. Each...

Introduction: The need of a long-term follow-up in adrenal incidentalomas (AI) is debated and data on cardiovascular events (CVE) are lacking.Methods: In this retrospective study all patients referred to seven Italian Endocrine Centers for AI, without signs of hypercortisolism at baseline and with a ≥5 years follow-up (80.7±30 months, range 60–286), were enrolled. From 171 patients (121 F) aged 59.5±10.2 years (range 25–79) the ...