Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Hypophosphatasia (HPP) is a rare metabolic, inherited disease of bone metabolism, caused by loss-of-function mutations within the gene coding for TNSALP, that result in a decrease in serum ALP concentrations and consequent accumulation of ALP substrates outside of the cell, including inorganic pyrophosphate which inhibits bone mineralization. HPP leads to a variety of clinical manifestations across all ages and its prognosis is conditioned principally by the skelet...

Background: Pituitary adenomas in children/adolescents represent around 3% of all intracranial neoplasms. They are more frequently hormone-secreting lesions, usually diagnosed in early childhood and late adolescence. Female gender is generally prevalent, because of most evident symptoms (i.e., irregular periods, galactorrhea, etc.). Giant pituitary adenomas (GA) very rarely occur in pediatric age, posing frequent challenges in their management.Patients a...

Objective: AGEs, compounds formed by the transformation of proteins, are increased in conditions of oxidative stress and promote inflammation by interacting with their receptor (RAGE) on cell membrane. By contrast, the soluble receptor for AGE (sRAGE), that is proteolytically cleaved from cell surface receptor via matrix metalloproteinases, sequester RAGE ligands and act as a cytoprotective and anti-inflammatory agent. AGEs/sRAGE interaction play a role in the pathogenesis of ...

Chronic hypercortisolism is associated with dramatic increase in fragility fractures. The evaluation of skeletal fragility in Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is a clinical challenge, since fractures may occur even in presence of normal bone mineral density (BMD). Recently, measurement of bone marrow fat (BMF) by vertebral magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) was proposed as alternative tool for evaluating skeletal fragility in primary and secondary osteoporosis. Noteworthy, rece...

Background: IL-37, member of the IL-1 family, is a natural suppressor of immune and inflammatory responses. Increased serum IL-37 levels were observed in several autoimmune diseases, including Graves’ disease. No data on TH are available from the literature.Materials and methods: We enrolled 45 euthyroid HT patients (5 M e 40 F, mean age 38.5±12.6) and 50 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. None was on LT-4 therapy. Smokers, subjects with ki...

Context: Chronic hypercortisolism is known to impact the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis, through a disruption of both thyrotropin-releasing-hormone and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) release. These changes, in turn, are responsible for reduced triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) synthesis and secretion, eventually resulting in central hypothyroidism (C-Hypo). However, data on magnitude and timing of recovery of the above abnormalities are still controversial...

Pasireotide is the first pituitary-directed approved therapy for Cushing’s disease (CD), effective in reducing UFC >50% in about half of patients, and with a good tolerability profile but associated with a relatively high incidence of hyperglicemia. The aim of this study was to evaluate efficacy and safety of long-term treatment with pasireotide (PAS) in patients with CD. Methods: We retrospectively evaluated 17 consecutive patients (11 females) with CD treated with P...

Rationale: Pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNets) are aggressive in 20% of cases, with local invasion, relapse/scarce response to conventional treatment, in the absence of reliable predictive parameters. In 2018, Trouillas et al. proposed a 5-tier prognostic classification, not widely validated yet. In our study we evaluated the outcomes of a PitNets monocentric series in the context of this classification.Materials & Methods: We retrospe...