Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Ovarian and adrenal aging leads to a progressive decline in androgens levels and deleterious effects on the quality of life. Despite this, specific hormone replacement is not routinely recommended in the management of women with a physiological or pathological decline in their production, mainly due to the lack of long-term follow-up safety data.Aim of the study: To evaluate and summarize the existing data about hormonal profile changes in me...

Background: Many questions concerning polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) remain unsolved, such as the long term evolution of cardiovascular (CV) risk markers and the risk for CV events.Methods: A total of 119 PCOS patients diagnosed in 2009 by NIH criteria at our Unit were evaluated at baseline for cardiovascular risk markers (hypertension, diabetes mellitus-DM, dyslipidaemia, obesity, carotid intima media thickness-cIMT, and epicardial fat thickness-EFT) ...

Introduction: It is presumed that hiccups are a vestigial reflex in mammals. They are rather common in healthy subjects. Persistent hiccups (lasting >48 h) are a serious clinical sign, and documented in a number of debilitating conditions. According to the available literature persistent hiccups in Addisonian crisis have been previously documented in only two patients.Case report: In July 2018, a 39 year old man checked into the ER complaining of nau...

Introduction: Women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are considered to have increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), even though the syndrome encompasses hugely varying phenotypes. Research into CVD prevention demonstrated a variety of biochemical and ultrasound (US) markers predicting risk in the general population, but those are sparsely utilised for PCOS, in part due to the patients’ therapeutic goals.Aim: To evaluate if PCOS type or...

Background: Very low-calorie ketogenic diet (VLCKD) was shown to be effective in reducing weight and insulin resistance (IR) in obese patients. Considering that IR is very common in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and that IR worsens hyperandrogenism, ovulatory disfunction, and body fat accumulation, conceivably VLCKD could alleviate PCOS manifestations in the obese phenotype.Objective: This study compared the effects of a commercial VLCKD (...

One-hour (1 h) glucose level of the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was proven to be a better predictor of insulin resistance (IR) in nondiabetic population than the two-hour (2 h) postload glucose level. Specifically, the 8.6 mmol/l cut-off was shown to be an early marker of impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). Previous studies have shown that nondiabetic patients with adrenal incidentalomas (AI) have higher IR than healthy control (HC). However, despite the subtle cortisol s...

High prevalence of insulin resistance (IR) has been shown in patients with adrenal incidentalomas (AI) and it has been demonstrated that an increase in IR is related to the adrenal tumor size (ATS). Also, responsive adrenal pathologies are well documented in patients with chronically elevated LH. The aim was to investigate the association between LH and IR and ATS and IR in AI patients. The case-control study was conducted in Clinic for endocrinology, diabetes and metabolic di...

Hypercortisolism is associated with high prevalence of psychiatric disorders and major depression occurs in 50–60% of patients. According to the available literature it is still unknown if patients with (possible) autonomous cortisol secretion ((P)ACS) carry the risk of depressive disorders. The Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) is a commonly used instrument for detecting and quantifying levels of depression and its validity as a screening instrument is well establish...