Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The Visceral Adiposity Index (VAI) has been proven to be an indicator of adipose distribution and function that indirectly expresses cardiometabolic risk, in particular in specific populations such as women with polycystic ovary syndrome, acromegaly or type 2 diabetes. Little information is known about its usefulness in the definition of cardiometabolic risk in ageing population.Objective: To study VAI in relation to metabolic and hormonal ...

Objective: After Cushing Syndrome (CS) is cured, up to 70% of patients develop chronic adrenal insufficiency (AI) and hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysfunction. A long-term treatment with glucocorticoids (GC) is mandatory to overcome AI. However, this treatment implies non-desired complications. Fibroblast growth factor (FGF21), a key regulator of metabolism, has a bidirectional relationship with GC that bypasses the negative feedback of the HPA axis. In this study...

Background: Acinic cell carcinoma of the parotid gland is a rare cancer, and metastatic (M1) disease is uncommon, occurring in around 10% of cases, with ectopic paraneoplastic Cushing being described in only few cases.Clinical case: A 58-year-old woman, with a history of dedifferentiated parotid acinar cell carcinoma, underwent surgery and adjuvant radiotherapy in 2005. In February 2019 the disease recurred with pulmonary, bone and lymph node metastases....

Introduction: In transsexualism, cross-sex hormone treatment (CHT) both improves and impairs several surrogate cardiovascular risk markers in female to male (FtoM). Few randomized trials on CHT with long follow-up and control group are available, and present evidence is inconsistent. We here assess changes in metabolic and cardiovascular risk after 12 months CHT compared with biological sex in FtoM GID.Methods: Prospective observational study, including ...

Introduction: Obestatin has been proposed to have anorexigenic and anti-ghrelin action. An association has been found between ghrelin and its decline with ageing and muscle strength and functional capacity, probably mediated by GH–IGF1 axis. However, no information is available in relation to the role of obestatin in muscle strength and functional capacity.Objective: The objective was to study obestatin concentrations in relation to handgrip strengt...

Background: Several ultrasound (US) scoring systems have been proposed to provide rules for standardizing risk stratification of thyroid nodules and to select which nodules should have a fine needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy performed. TI-RADS classification is one of the most used in the daily practise. Recently, EU-TIRADS scoring system has been published to simplify the evaluation of thyroid nodules and to integrate previous classifications into a single system. We aimed to c...

Introduction: Chronic hypercortisolism is marked by an increased cardiovascular risk pattern. Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammation that involves both innate and adaptive immunity. Glucocorticoids (GC) are immune-suppressors and adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) possesses immune-modulatory activities. GC and ACTH may act in atherothrombotic inflammatory pathways.Aim: To analyze the immune cells pattern in endogenous Cushing syndrome (CS) in order t...

Introduction: Familial non-medullary thyroid cancer(FNMTC) represents 3–9% of thyroid cancer cases. Although the susceptibility genes for syndromic FNMTC are known, most cases of FNMTC are nonsyndromic and the genetic causes are unknown.Patients and methods: We conducted a multicenter study to identify a candidate susceptibility gene for nonsyndromic FNTMC. We collected blood specimens, clinical and pathological data from 38 kindreds with FNMTC (32 ...

Introduction: Urine free cortisol measurements are routinely performed to evaluate hypercortisolism. Despite their analytical inaccuracy, immunoassay-based methods are frequently used. Advances in liquid chromatography high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) facilitate the incorporation of powerful diagnostic tools into clinical laboratories with high analytical specificity that also allow simultaneous quantification of different metabolites and untargeted compound identif...

Introduction: Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) is the key target tissue of glucocorticoids (GC) during active Cushing Syndrome (CS) and a metabolic tissue associated to insulin-resistance and an increased cardiometabolic risk. Till date there are no data regarding gene expression in VAT in CS and only few data about the mRNA in subcutaneous one. The aim of this study was to study the visceral VAT tissue transcriptional changes in ACTH-independent CS.Methods...