Endocrine Abstracts

There is currently no curative treatment for metastatic phaeochromocytoma (PH) and paraganglioma (PG). Patient management aims at reducing tumor burden and preventing mechanical and secretory consequences of metastatic spread and must be adapted to disease progression. Focal treatments (surgery, radiofrequency ablation and embolization) reduce hypersecretion and facilitate subsequent systemic therapies using radionuclides (131I-MIBG, 177Lu- or 90Y-DOTATOC), chemotherapy (cyclo...

Pheochromocytomas (PH) and functional paragangliomas (PGL) are neoplasms of chromaffin tissue that synthesize catecholamines. The diagnosis of PH or functional PGL is based on the determination of metanephrines. Most catecholamine-secreting tumors arise in the adrenal glands (PH proper) and are easily detected by computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging. Patients may also harbor extraadrenal primary tumors (PGL) or distant metastases. Adrenal imaging should therefore ...

Objective: Recent guidelines promote adrenal venous sampling (AVS) as the reference test to document lateralised aldosterone hypersecretion in primary aldosteronism (PA). However, there are wide discrepancies between institutions in the criteria used. Our objective was to evaluate their consequences on the interpretation of AVS results.Design and methods: All 506 AVS performed from 01/2001 to 03/2009 in our institution were included. Results were interpr...

We have shown that 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) receptor type 4 (5-HT4R) agonists stimulate aldosterone production in patients with aldosterone-producing adenoma (APA). Moreover, 5-HT-positive cells were observed in APA tissues and 5-HT4R mRNAs were markedly overexpressed in APAs in comparison with normal adrenals. All these results suggested that 5-HT produced by adrenal mast cells could be involved in the physiopathology of APAs. The aim of this work was to investigate the rol...

It is now well demonstrated that, in the human adrenal gland, aldosterone and cortisol productions are stimulated by autocrine/paracrine factors, like serotonin (5-HT) and arginine vasopressin (AVP). Several data indicate that these signals may also be involved in the regulation of corticosteroidogenesis in adrenocortical hyperplasias and tumors. 5-HT is detected in clusters of steroidogenic cells in aldosterone-producing adrenocortical adenomas (APAs), and in both ACTH-indepe...