Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The approach for initial thyroid hormone suppression in patients who undergo surgery for differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC), is based upon the risk of disease recurrence. In particular, recent American Thyroid Association guidelines suggest to maintain TSH levels between 0.1 and 0.5 mU/l and less than 0.1 mU/l for patients with ‘intermediate’ and ‘high’ risk respectively. The aim of the study is to identify the major predictive factors of LT4...

The effects in vitro and in vivo of somatostatin (SS) analogues are linked to the presence of specific binding sites on target cells. Estradiol (E2) may modulate the expression of SS receptors (SSTR) in some cell models, including breast cancer and pituitary cells. Aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of E2 on SSTR1-5 ligand binding domains (LBD) expression levels in prostate epithelial cells (PEC).Methods: We investigated the effe...

Background: In a previous publication we identified the major predictive factors of levothyroxine (LT4) requirement and proposed an efficient nomogram to calculate LT4 substitutive starting dose after total thyroidectomy for benign disease. The aim of this study was to assess whether the LT4 requirement differs between the tablet and the soft gel capsules formulations.Methods: One hundred and three consecutive patients su...

Thyroglobulin (Tg) is a highly sensitive tumor marker of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC). To optimize the sensitivity, guidelines recommend Tg measurement after stimulation with recombinant TSH (rh-TSH) 6–12 months after radio remnant ablation (RRA). Based on recent evidence in Literature, it is possible to avoid the measurement of Tg after stimulation with rh-TSH (S-Tg) in presence of undetectable values of basal Tg (B-Tg) if high functional sensitivity (0.1 ng/ml) m...

Introduction: Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) is the most frequent endocrine cancer. After surgery followed, if any, by 131I radio remnant ablation (RRA), follow-up monitoring consists of neck ultrasonography (US) and measurements of thyroglobulin (Tg) levels and anti-Tg antibodies (Ac-Tg) both on levothyroxine (L-T4) therapy and after recombinant TSH (rTSH). The aim of our study is to define a cut-off of Tg before RRA (RRA-Tg) during <...

Introduction: The presence of truncated variant of somatostatin receptors (SSTR) has been demonstrated in pituitary tumours. These variants seems act as dominant negative of SSTR and induce the resistance to SST analogue (SSTA) treatment. A variant of SSTR5, sst5TMD4, has been found to disrupt SST signalling in breast cancer cells. In present study, we assayed the expression of sst5TMD4 in two non-transformed epithelial prostate cell lines (EPC): EPN, derived from a normal sur...

Aim: To develop a cost-effective instrument to evaluate the preoperative malignancy risk of thyroid nodules (TNs).Patients&Methods: A meta-analysis of the clinical (C) and ultrasonographic (U) features associated with an increased risk of malignancy was conducted searching in the PubMed database. For each of them we computed the odds ratio and we consequently assigned a score. The resulted C+U score along with the 5-tiered score of fine-needle aspira...

Hirsutism affects 5–10% of women of reproductive age and may be the initial sign of an androgen disorder. We describe two cases of occult Sertoli-Leydig ovarian cell tumor suspected only on the basis of clinical and laboratory features.The first patient, a 42 year-old woman came to our attention for hirsutism. Several blood samples showed a very high testosterone concentration (~4 ng/ml), while non-ovarian causes of hyperandrogenism were excluded. A...

Background: Expression of somatostatin receptor (SST) and therapy with somatostatin analogues have been scarcely investigated in parathyroid tumors.Objective: To evaluate the effects of depot long acting octreotide (OCT-LAR) on primary hyperparathyroidism in patients affected with multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN-1).Subjects and methods: Eight patients with a genetically confirmed MEN-1 were enrolled. All patients presented...

Hyperthyroidism associated to hyperthyrotropinemia is a rare condition which can be due to two different causes: resistance to thyroid hormones and TSH secreting adenoma. The differential diagnosis is not easy.We have observed 8 patients with hyperthyroidism associated to inappropriately elevated TSH. All patients had similar basal levels of thyroid hormones and 7 out of 8 had a multinodular goiter.Four out of 8 patients showed lac...