Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: In addition to its well known effects on calcium homeostasis and bone metabolism, growing evidences shows that vitamin D plays an important role in regulation of cancer angiogenesis, cell apoptosis, differentiation, and proliferation. Vitamin D acts through vitamin D receptor (VDR), an intracellular nuclear receptor. It was found an association between different cancer histotypes and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of VDR. Despite the close relationship be...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is often diagnosed at late stage or metastatic condition. Surgical resection is considered treatment of choice and other treatment options include chemoembolization, radiofrequency ablation and photodynamic therapy. We evaluated the expression levels of the 5 somatostatin receptors (SSTRs) in 23 biopsies of HCC patients and also mTOR, p70S6K and 4eBP1 in HuH-7 and HepG2 and investigated the in vitro effect of somatostatin analogs (SA) and ...

Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) accounts for ~5–10% of thyroid cancers. Intense efforts are currently directed toward the identification of new druggable targets for the treatment of MTC. The aim of this study was to investigate whether drugs acting at voltage-gated T-type calcium channels could affect hormone release and/or cell proliferation in a MTC cell line, the TT cells. The expression of the three isoforms of T-type calcium channels (CaV3.1, CaV3.2 and CaV3.3) wa...

Introduction: Bone metabolism is impaired in several lipid storage diseases. At now no data are available in Fabry disease (FD), a genetic lipid storage disease characterized by systemic accumulation of glicolipids. The aim of this study was to evaluate bone metabolism and calcium/vitamin-D pathway in patients with FD.Methods/design: Study population included 15 FD patients (8 M and 7 F, age 28–59 years) and 15 sex-, age- and BMI-matched normal subj...

Background: The prostate cancer (CaP) is among the most commonly diagnosed cancers, accounting for about 20% of all newly diagnosed cancers. Subject of recent studies is the role of vitamin D in the pathogenesis of CaP. Literature data speculated about the role of vitamin D in the progression of Cap. In addition, several studies have shown an association between VDR gene polymorphism FokI and CaP especially in the Asian population.Objective: The aim of t...

Women with acromegaly present often menstrual irregularity, anovularity and infertility. A direct role of GH and IGF1 excess on the hypothalamus–pituitary–gonadal axis, hyperprolactinemia and an impaired gonadotrophin secretion related to a tumor mass effect, or polycystic ovary syndrome have been suggested as possible mechanisms related to infertility. However, no systematic data are available on fertility in these patients. The aim of this retrospective study was t...