Endocrine Abstracts

: Patients with Cushing’s disease (CD) have increased cardiovascular risk due to metabolic alterations caused by glucocorticoids excess. Pasireotide, a multireceptor-targeted somatostatin analogue, is a therapeutic option in CD patients in whom surgery is not curative or not feasible. Pasireotide has been shown to be effective in controlling hypercortisolism and to improve metabolic features. Recently, the visceral adiposity index (VAI) has been proposed as a marker of vi...

Over the last two years, COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown have exerted a remarkable psychological burden in the general population. Such an impact is supposed to be even worse in acromegaly, known to induce a severe psychological impairment due to its somatic disfigurements and systemic comorbidities. The current observational study aimed at investigating the impact of COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown on psychological health in acromegalic patients as compared to non-acromegalic h...

BRAFV600E mutation is considered useful in recognizing thyroid cancer aggressiveness or poor prognosis particularly in certain variants of papillary thyroid cancinoma (PTC). A recent meta-analysis identified 12 cancer-versus-non cancer gene candidate as markers of thyroid cancer; among these TIMP-1 (tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases) was found consistently up-regulated. Our aim was to evaluate BRAFV600E mutation and TIMP-1 expression in 14 PTC class...

Anaplastic thyropid carcinoma (ATC) is one of the most aggressive endocrine tumors with morphological features of undifferentiated neoplasm. Patients with ATC have a poor prognosis with a mean survival time of 2–6 months. Surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy do not improve survival rate. Bisphosphonates, analogs of endogenous pyrophosphates in which a carbon atom replaces the central oxygen atom, are successful agents for the prevention and treatment of postmenopausal o...

In the last years, a growing body of evidence supports the notion that tumors are organized in a hierarchy of heterogeneous cell populations with different biologic properties and that the capability to sustain tumor formation and growth exclusively resides in a small proportion of tumor cells, termed cancer stem cells (CSC). The existence of CSC was first proven in the context of acute myelogenous leukaemia, and subsequently verified in brain, breast, colon and prostate cance...

A strong evidence suggests the role of BRAFV600E mutation in determining the aggressiveness of thyroid cancer. To detect how the association of BRAF mutation could influence the aggressiveness of particular subtypes of thyroid tumors, we analysed a possible correlation between BRAFV600E and metalloproteinase (MMPs) activity, as its enhanced production could be an important determinant of tumor invasion. For this purpose, we investigated the activity and t...

Introduction: Subcutaneous (sc) pasireotide effectively reduces cortisol levels, improves signs/symptoms and is generally well tolerated in Cushing’s disease (CD) patients, as shown in previous clinical trials. We report interim results from a multicentre, real-world observational study evaluating the long-term safety and efficacy of pasireotide sc in clinical practice in CD patients.Methods: Adults with CD, for whom surgery has failed or is not an ...

Adrenal insufficiency (AI) requires life-long glucocorticoid (GC) treatment, which is associated with an increased risk of metabolic syndrome (MS), probably due to cortisol overexposure for multiple drug daily doses, together with an impairment of quality of life (QoL). Moreover treatment compliance (TC) is reported to be suboptimal in AI patients. The current study aimed at investigating the impact of the switch from twice/thrice daily conventional GCs to once daily dual-rele...

Somatostatin analogs (SSA) effectively control symptoms in neuroendocrine tumours (NET), besides showing antiproliferative activity. In progressive or metastatic NET, increasing SSA dose or shortening the dosing interval are common clinical practice, though empirical. Aim of this study is to evaluate efficacy and safety of high-dose SSA treatment in patients with progressive disease under standard SSA dose. Twenty-one patients (median age 56.8 years) with NET of different orig...

Introduction: Hyperprolactinemia is reportedly associated with an impaired metabolic profile, particularly in patients with concomitant hypogonadism. The current study aimed at investigating the effects of short (12 months) and long (60 months) treatment with cabergoline (CAB) on metabolic complications, metabolic syndrome (MS) prevalence and visceral adiposity index (VAI) in hyperprolactinemic patients.Patients and methods: Seventy-one patients (51 F, 2...