Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Somatostatin (SST) is a widely distributed polypeptide that modulates the endocrine and exocrine secretion, cellular proliferation and differentiation, and apoptosis via G protein-linked receptors. Our previous studies showed high SSTR expression in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), aldosterone producing adenoma (APA) and in cortisol producing adenoma (CPA). Only very few information are available about the effectiveness of SST analogs in adrenal tumors.<p clas...

Introduction: Angiogenesis plays a major role in cancer growth and metastasis. Differences in angiogenesis and the balance of angiogenic growth factors and inhibitors may play a role in determining the observed variations in tumor behaviour. VEGF overexpression in adrenocortical carcinomas (AC) has been recently shown. Moreover a new steroidogenic specific tissue angiogenic factor (EG-VEGF) has been described, and its role is presently unknown in adrenal tumors. Previous evide...

In patients with primary aldosteronism (PA), adrenal vein sampling (AVS) is considered the gold standard to distinguish between unilateral and bilateral autonomous production of aldosterone, while diagnostic imaging tests by CT scan or MRI are often inconclusive for the diagnosis. To date agreement is lacking on the best criteria indicating successful cannulation and lateralization.The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of different diagnostic c...

The screening for primary aldosteronism (PA) is based on the aldosterone/renin ratio (ARR), which is calculated with the plasma renin activity (PRA) as denominator. A direct measurement of active renin (DRA) is being used as an alternative to PRA, but its diagnostic performance remains uncertain.Aim of the study was to head-to-head compare the ARR based on PRA (ARR-P) to on DRA (ARR-D), at baseline and post-captopril, for identifying aldosterone-producin...