Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Glucose metabolism derangements (GMD) and thyroid nodules (TN) are the most frequent endocrine disorders. A relationship between these conditions has been suggested, but data are still controversial and no evidence was reported regarding sex differences.Aim: To evaluate the distribution of impaired fasting glucose (IFG), normal glucose tolerance (NGT), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and TN according to sex.<p cla...

Introduction: Typical and Atypical bronchial carcinoids (TBC and ABC) are rare neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN). TBC are low grade and well-differentiated NEN often with indolent clinical behavior, slow growth, rare extra-thoracic metastases, and with a long survival following surgical resection. Conversely, ABC have often a worse prognosis with a greater tendency to metastasize and recur. A better understanding of TBC and ABC genetic background would help in evaluating prognosi...

: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNETs) are rare neoplasms arising from the endocrine pancreas. The fist line treatment is surgery that is often not curative in the presence of metastatic disease. Therefore, there is an increasing need for medical therapy. Sunitinib is a multi-target receptor tyrosine-kinase (RTK) inhibitor, described as having as main target VEGF receptor, with antitumor and antiangiogenic effects, approved for pNETs medical treatment. This study is aimed...

Finding new preclinical models to study the effects of anticancer drugs is one of the aims of biomedical research. Indeed, testing different in vitro systems can lead to a better understanding of the molecular pathways regulating tumor development and growth, and help to find new therapeutic approaches. This is crucial especially in the settings of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNET), where one of the main drugs approved for medical treatment is Sunitinib, a mult...

Introduction: Typical and atypical bronchial carcinoids (TBC and ABC) are well-differentiated neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN). First-line treatment is radical removal of the primary tumour; however, management of metastatic BC is still challenging. Bronchial carcinoids (BC) may benefit from treatment with mTOR inhibitors, although response rates are moderate. TBC have shown reduced sensibility to mTOR inhibitors respect to ABC, notwithstanding its less aggressive behaviour. PI3...

Introduction: Thyroid nodules (TN) are common entities usually discovered during a physical exam or by chance with ultrasound (US) procedures performed for reasons different from thyroid check. The majority of nodules are benign, notwithstanding the growing incidence of thyroid cancer (TC), which increases much largely as compared to all other tumours each year and will be, presumably, the most incident malignancy in women after breast cancer. The clinical challenge relies on ...

IGF1 represents an important growth factor in pituitary physiology and pathology, also mediating the negative feed-back mechanisms on somatotroph axis. It has been previously demonstrated that IGF1 promotes cell viability in primary cultures of human non functioning pituitary adenomas, by a mechanisms involving, at least in part, mTOR signaling, which is involved in many pathways controlling proliferation. We aimed at investigating whether mTOR may mediate IGF1 effects also in...

BackgroundPapillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most frequent thyroid malignant neoplasm. American Thyroid Association (ATA) guidelines don’t specify how to follow-up low-risk PTC patients not receiving radioiodine therapy (RAI) after total thyroidectomy (TT). Indeed, there is no consensus among authors regarding the interpretation of thyroglobulin (TG) levels and ultrasound neck (US) findings during follow-up in these settings.<p class="abst...

BackgroundThyroid diseases and diabetes are the two most common endocrinopathies. A relationship between these two conditions is suggested by many studies, as diabetic population seems to present increased thyroid impairment. However, clinical data are still very sparse.AimTo evaluate thyroid morphologic characteristics among patients with different glucose tolerance status.Material and...

: Magmas, a gene encoding for the mitochondrial import inner membrane translocase subunit, Tim16, protects different cell lines from the antitumoral effects of several pro-apoptotic stimuli (i.e. chemicals and chemotherapeutic agents). The synthetic Compound 5 is capable of sensitizing chemoresistant tumor cells overexpressing Magmas to proapoptotic stimuli, indicating that this molecule may be useful to overcome tumor chemoresistance. The aim of our study was to evaluate whet...