Endocrine Abstracts

Obesity and its consequences, such as type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, are serious health threats. However, despite what the obesity epidemic might suggest, the balance between caloric intake and expenditure is regulated with tremendous precision under most circumstances. Thus, a regulatory system exists, where deviations from the defended body adiposity level trigger signals that can be monitored by specific intracellular metabolic pathways. Such pathways a...

Introduction: Bone loss in thyroid dysfunction was first described by von Recklinghausen. Elevated bone turnover and decreased bone mass result when thyroid hormone levels are high and TSH levels suppressed. The changes in bone mass are impressive even in patients whit subclinical hypertiroidism, where thyroid hormones are within the normal range, but TSH is low or undetectable. Evidence show that endogenous and exogenous TSH suppression is associated with an increased fractur...

Maternal obesity during pregnancy is associated with several metabolic impairments in offspring, some of them evidenced from early infancy. Some reports have demonstrated that offspring of obese rats, whose obesity was induced by high fat diet consumption, have an increase sympathetic tone and increased norepinephrine (NE) content in kidney, liver and ovary. We recently reported that maternal administration of metformin prevents the increase in ovarian NE in offspring when the...

Context: Patients with adrenal insufficiency (AI) have excess mortality and morbidity, mainly due to cardiovascular diseases. The mechanisms for this is unclear.Objective: To assess cardiovascular structure and function in AI patients on conventional replacement therapy and after switching to once-daily, modified-release hydrocortisone (OD-HC).Methods: The analysis included 17 adult AI patients (11 with primary AI, 7 with secondary...

Paragangliomas (PG) originating from the nasal cavity are very rare and usually have an indolent growth. Surgery offers the only possibility of cure for these patients while radiotherapy can only slow their growth rate. Intracranial or leptomeningeal dissemination is very rare, with only 7 cases described in the literature. A 77 year old man with a 4-years history of nasal obstruction. He underwent a nasofibroscopy with a biopsy that revealed a nasosinusal neuroendocrine tumou...

Most cases of gynecomastia are idiopathic. Among the most frequently identified etiologies are: persistent pubertal gynecomastia, hypogonadism, anabolic steroids and other pharmaceutical drugs use. In the literature, ginecomastia is a well-recognized manifestation of thyrotoxicosis in male patients (in the range of 10% to 40%). However, it is extremely rare in clinical practice as the initial presentation of thyrotoxicosis. The two main factors that contribute to gynecomastia ...

Aim: To evaluate adiponectin and resistin levels and their relationship with various biochemical and metabolic and atherogenic parameters markers, as well as their correlation, and to investigate its contribution in pathogenesis of insulin resistance in cohort women with PCOS and of insulin resistance as well as in non-insulin resistant women with PCOS. Methods: This study was designed as a cross-sectional and involves 80 premenopausal women. Of these patients, 63 females have...

Hypoparathyroidism is, in Italy, an orphan disease because the hormonal replacement therapy is possible only with teriparatide (fragment 1–34 of of human parathyroid hormone). Otherwise the patients use oral calcium and calcitriol. This scheme of therapy obtained correct plasmatic calcium and phosphate levels, correct urinary excretion of calcium and phosphate, adequate quality of life – QoL only in a little percentage of patients. Especially kidney stones, intra-ren...

Aim: To find if testosterone undecanoat 1000 mg injection (Nebido; Bayer-Schering) has a negative effect on prostate.Materials and methods: i) PSA (ng/ml) was registred retrospective (from files) and prospective analysis (onset 2010). ii) From over 175 patients to whom testosterone undecanoate 1000 mg, i.m. was administrated at 3 months, in the last 4 years, and to whom the prostatic volume was quantified (Journal of Sexual Medicine8</st...

Objectives: The study of the real indications for thyroid ultrasound and in which pathological conditions the echography is of real use and not for abuse.Material and methods: In the last 10 years, over 13 000 echographies were performed in 5136 consecutive patients for ‘thyroid disturbances’. In a previous paper we described 7 echographic patterns for thyroid ultrasound (9th ECE). The diagnosis of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) was consider...