Endocrine Abstracts

In thyroid cells TSH/cAMP stimulation is associated with proliferation and differentiation. The principal effector of cAMP is the protein kinase A (PKA) and events downstream PKA activation, signaling specificity and expression of PKA isoforms are largely unexplored. PKA is composed of two regulatory and two catalytic subunits. Two major isoforms of PKA (I and II) are determined by their specific regulatory subunits (RIα, RIβ, RIIα and RIIβ). A recent gene ...

Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) is the key modulator of thyroid cell function. Binding of TSH to its receptor (TSHR) results in an increase of cAMP intracellular concentration, which activates protein kinase A (PKA) to phosphorylate CREB and other substrates. Eventually, this leads to gene transcription modification associated with both proliferation and differentiation. Two major types of PKA (PKA I and II) exist in mammal cells, but their specific role in TSH signaling is ...

Introduction: In type 1 multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN1), primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) is a challenging problem due to the high post-surgery recurrence rate. Cinacalcet is a calcimimetic agent which showed to be effective in patients in whom surgery is contraindicated or refused. In this study we assessed the efficacy and the safeness of cinacalcet in MEN1 patients, in comparison with patients with sporadic PHPT (sPHPT). Moreover, the influence of Arg990Gly CASR polym...

Primary HPT shows a great variability in its clinical course and severity, which might be related to polymorphic variants of the CASR gene. The aim of the study was to evaluate the frequency of two known CASR single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), i.e. G/T at codon 986 and G/A at codon 990, in a homogenous North-Italian cohort of PHPT patients compared with a sex and age matched healthy population and the possible correlation of these CASR gene variants with the clinical and ...

Activating mutations of the RET proto-oncogene, encoding a tyrosine kinase receptor, are associated with inherited syndromes, MEN2A and MEN2B, and with both familial and sporadic medullary thyroid cancer (MTC). Single base-pair missense mutations in the extracellular cysteine-rich domain are responsible for the majority of MEN2A and familial MTC (FMTC) cases. Rarely, somatic deletions and germline duplications of variable segments of the gene have been reported in spora...