Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Transsphenoidal surgery (TSS) is the treatment option of first choice for Cushing’s disease (CD). The traditional microsurgical technique has recently been challenged by endoscopic surgical methods. We present endocrine outcome of TSS in CD with a modified contemporary microsurgical concept.Methods: Eighty three patients underwent TSS for newly-diagnosed CD (72 microadenomas and 11 macroadenomas). An enlarged resection was performed in...

Objective: In part I of the study a health related quality of life (HRQoL) inventory for Cushing’s disease (CD), the Tuebingen Cushing-25 quality of life inventory (Tuebingen CD-25) was developed. In the second part, we assessed normative data from healthy controls (HC) with which the individual patients’ scores can be compared.Methods: Sources for item generation consisted of technical literature, interviews with patients and the rating of neu...

Immunohistochemistry is commonly performed on tumour specimen obtained during transsphenoidal surgery, but its predictive value for clinical outcome is largely unknown. The aim of this study was to compare clinical and biochemical outcome characteristics after surgery with histological tumour properties. This was achieved by matching data from the German Acromegaly Register with those of the Pituitary Tumour Registry of the German pituitary working group. From 285 out of 1543 ...

IntroductionIntegrins are heterodimeric transmembrane proteins composed of alpha and beta subunits that mediate cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions. Several integrins are overexpressed in human cancers and their ECM recognition motif, arginine-glycine-aspartate (RGD), is being utilized for tumour imaging and targeting.AimTo explore the expression and function of RGD-binding integrins in...

IntroductionSomatic USP8 mutations are found in around 50% of Cushing’s disease tumours and are located in a single mutational hotspot that contains the recognition site for 14–3-3. These proteins bind to phosphoserine recognition motifs to alter the function and location of their target proteins, and are deregulated in several cancers. AimTo explore the expression and function of 14–3-3 prot...

IntroductionTP53 mutations have been rarely reported in pituitary tumours. Recently two exploratory exome sequencing studies have identified somatic TP53 mutations in a small number of functional corticotroph tumours (6/18 and 4/10) with USP8 wild type (wt) status, suggesting that they may be more frequent than previously thought. Nevertheless, the clinical impact of those mutations is still unknown.AimTo det...