Endocrine Abstracts

Context: Kallmann syndrome (KS) is a developmental disease associating congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (CHH) and sense of smell impairment owing to olfactory structures (OS) aplasia/hypoplasia. Although rhinencephalic MRI allows to detect specific KS OS abnormalities useful to discriminate KS from normosmic CHH (nCHH), this technique is not efficient enough to study anterior skull bone structures.Objectives: To search for specific anterior skull...

The stable somatostatin analog octreotide has been successfully used for imaging and treatment of a variety of human tumors. Octreotide treatment has been reported of limited value in pheochromocytoma (PHEO). PHEOs often express more than one somatostatin receptor, and it is uncertain by which receptor subtype the functional responses of octreotide are mediated. A recent study showed by immunohistochemical staining that vast majority of tumors (90%) were positive for sst(3), i...

Kallmann syndrome (KS) is characterized by hypogonadotropic hypogonadism and other non-reproductive disorders including smell deficiency due to olfactory bulb developmental abnormalities. The aim of our study was to evaluate retrospectively the role of MRI in patients with clinical diagnosis of KS, searching for any abnormalities of the brain structures involved.Methods: We evaluated 25 KS pts (14–32 years, 4F, 21 M). KS cases were classified as hyp...

Context: The effects of cabergoline on cardiac valves have been extensively studied in Parkinson’s disease and hyperprolactinemia but not in acromegaly, a condition at risk of cardiac valve abnormalities.Objective: We examined the prevalence of heart valve disease and regurgitation in a series of patients with acromegaly treated with cabergoline, by comparison with matched patients who had never received this drug.Design and s...

Background: Kallmann syndrome (KS) is a genetic disorder associating pubertal failure with anosmia/hyposmia. KS is related to defective neuronal development affecting both the migration of olfactory nerve endings and GnRH neurons. The discovery of several genetic mutations responsible for KS led to the identification of signaling pathways involved in these processes, but the mutations so far identified account for only 30% of cases of KS. Here we attempted to identify new KS r...