Endocrine Abstracts

The clinical diagnostic examination of patients and the research-oriented investigation of the pathophysiology of skeletal disorders require imaging techniques that allow to visualize the skeleton at different scales: from the organ level to tissue, cellular, and subcellular levels, depicting morphology and function. Progress in the field of imaging technologies resulted in methods suited for clinical investigation of patients in vivo, non-invasive methods for preclinical anim...

Localized transitions in chromatin structure accompany nuclear receptor binding events in mammalian cells. These remodeling processes are critical to determine the binding landscape for steroid receptors (SRs) in cancer cells. Multiple reports indicate that steroid receptors (ER, GR, AR, PR) can regulate the binding patterns for each other, particularly during cancer progression. Elucidation of the mechanisms by which these ‘chromatin opening’ processes occur is cent...

We report the case of a 55 years old female patient with parallel appearance of mucoepidermoid carcinoma and papillary thyroid carcinoma. She had autoimmune adrenal insufficiency and a pulmonary adenocarcinoma cured by lobectomy and external irradiation six years before. She had been referred to our department because of a rapidly growing thyroid nodule. Aspiration cytology suspected papillary tumor and a tumor of non-thyroid origin as well. Thyroidectomy and bilateral neck ly...

In normal physiology, glucocorticoid receptor (GR) activation regulates cell type-dependent genes whose products influence metabolism, inflammation, cell cycle and apoptosis/cell survival pathways. Synthetic GR agonists, or glucocorticoids (GCs), are often used to treat hematologic malignancies because of GR’s ability to induce proapoptotic gene expression, inhibit nuclear factor–κB, and induce cell cycle arrest. In contrast, recent examination of GR expression ...

Early-stage ER+ breast cancer (BC) with high tumor glucocorticoid receptor (GR) expression is associated with improved long term relapse-free survival compared to tumors with low GR expression. In addition, GR activity inhibits ER-mediated BC cell proliferation. We therefore hypothesized that GR and ER engage in nuclear receptor crosstalk to influence pro-proliferative gene expression, thus contributing to a better outcome in ER+/GR+ breast cancer. To understand the mechanisms...

Objective: Genetic variation in the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) gene may be related to the clinical heterogenety and severity of the Cushing’s syndrome. BclI, N363S and ER22/23EK polymorphisms are the three most investigated polymorphisms within the GR gene, however, the importance and magnitude of their effect in hypercortisolemic states are unclear. The BclI and the N363S variants are associated with increased, while the ER22/23EK variant is associated with reduced glu...

Surgical treatment is the first therapeutic option in patients affected with medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). However, cure-rates are often low due to the high frequency of loco-regional metastases and recurrences. Therefore, post-operative hyper-calcitoninemia is a common feature in CMT. Despite these findings, traditional imaging techniques are often unable to localize tumour foci. In the last years the availability of new morpho-functional techniques might offer new chanc...

Introduction: Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN 1) may present as a familial or a sporadic disorder with multiple endocrine tumours including parathyroid adenomas or hyperplasias, tumours of endocrine pancreatic and pituitary gland. Familial and sporadic MEN 1-related states which do not fulfill current diagnostic criteria but may be related to MEN 1 syndrome have been also described.Aims: The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence and sp...