Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: Transsphenoidal surgery is the treatment of choice for Cushing’s disease (CD). Surgery is challenging due to the often very small adenomas. In experienced pituitary centers a high remission rate is reported. Nevertheless, endocrinologists and neurosurgeons face cases with persistent or recurrent CD. These patients must be referred to an experienced pituitary center. In addition to medical treatment, radiation therapy and bilateral adrenalectomy, repeat TSS must...

Corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH) stimulation test is used in the differential diagnosis of Cushing’s syndrome. Cushing’s disease tumours carry somatic driver activating mutations in the ubiquitin-specific-protease 8 (USP8) gene in almost half of the cases. The aim of the present study was to examine whether the USP8 mutational status in Cushing’s disease tumours influences the response to the CRH stimulation test. We did a monocentric, re...

Introduction and Objective: Adult craniopharyngioma as a rare neoplasm of the central nervous system is still very poorly understood. The clinical implications for affected patients are numerous, ranging from endocrine dysfunction to visual loss and neurological impairment. Although the progress of this tumor entity is slow by nature, affected patients often suffer from multiple symptoms even after successful treatment with a strong impact on their individual quality of life. ...

Introduction: The aim of the present study was to explore pain prevalence, pain locations and its impact on everyday activities and health-related quality of life (QoL) in a large cohort of patients with acromegaly.Methods: We conducted a survey at three major centers specialized on the treatment of pituitary diseases. 124 patients with acromegaly (mean age 56.6y ± 13.5) filled in a self-constructed questionnaire on acromegaly symptoms, pain includi...

Introduction: Acromegalic patients (AP) often report fatigue and chronic subjective complaints. We aimed to investigate in more detail these aspects in AP, dependent on disease activity, age, gender, medication and pituitary insufficiency (PI).Patients/methods: Cross sectional, 124 patients (M/W 51/73, age 58.3±14.7 years, 49/75–active/controlled disease). The patients completed the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20) and the Giessen Su...

Background: Invasive nonfunctioning (NF) pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNETs) are non-resectable neoplasms associated to frequent relapse and significant comorbidities. As current treatments often fail against NF-PitNETs, identifying actionable therapeutic targets is essential. We focused on the angiopoietin-2 (Angpt2)/Tie2 axis, usually active in endothelial cells (ECs).Methods: ANGPT2 plasma levels in NF-PitNET patients and healthy controls were m...