Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Pituitary adenomas in children/adolescents represent around 3% of all intracranial neoplasms. They are more frequently hormone-secreting lesions, usually diagnosed in early childhood and late adolescence. Female gender is generally prevalent, because of most evident symptoms (i.e., irregular periods, galactorrhea, etc.). Giant pituitary adenomas (GA) very rarely occur in pediatric age, posing frequent challenges in their management.Patients a...

Several lines of evidence indicate an increased risk of adverse gestational outcomes in women with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) already as of TSH levels at early pregnancy >2.5mU/l, and definitely greater for TSH concentration >4mU/l. The latest guidelines recommend preconception TSH levels (pre-C-TSH) in HT women be maintained below 2.5mU/l, this threshold being expected to prevent hypothyroidism occurrence at early gestation.Objectives: To...

Background: PCBs are chemical pollutants able to promote inflammation and carcinogenesis. They can accumulate in human tissues through the food chain causing a variety of adverse health effects. The NF-E2 p45-related factor 2 (NRF2) and the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) are ligand activated transcription factors controlling pathways modulating xenobiotic metabolism. Increasing evidence indicate the involvement of AhR in regulating extracellular matrix (ECM) homeostasis. ECM ...

Context: Chronic hypercortisolism is known to impact the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis, through a disruption of both thyrotropin-releasing-hormone and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) release. These changes, in turn, are responsible for reduced triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) synthesis and secretion, eventually resulting in central hypothyroidism (C-Hypo). However, data on magnitude and timing of recovery of the above abnormalities are still controversial...

Pasireotide is the first pituitary-directed approved therapy for Cushing’s disease (CD), effective in reducing UFC >50% in about half of patients, and with a good tolerability profile but associated with a relatively high incidence of hyperglicemia. The aim of this study was to evaluate efficacy and safety of long-term treatment with pasireotide (PAS) in patients with CD. Methods: We retrospectively evaluated 17 consecutive patients (11 females) with CD treated with P...

Rationale: Pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNets) are aggressive in 20% of cases, with local invasion, relapse/scarce response to conventional treatment, in the absence of reliable predictive parameters. In 2018, Trouillas et al. proposed a 5-tier prognostic classification, not widely validated yet. In our study we evaluated the outcomes of a PitNets monocentric series in the context of this classification.Materials & Methods: We retrospe...

Evidences suggest that environmental contaminants exposure and/or the impairment of intracellular xenobiotic metabolizing system could affect pituitary pathophysiology. Glutathione-S-transferase-P1 (GSTP1) gene encodes for an enzyme that is involved in cellular detoxification mechanisms. GSTP1 altered activity or expression has been reported in some tumours.We aimed to assess the GSTP1 gene promoter methylation status in acromegaly patients and its contr...

Introduction: CyberKnife (CK) is an emerging treatment for pituitary tumours (PT) resistant to other therapies.Patients and methods: We report long-term CK effect on endocrine function and tumour volume in 20 PT patients (11M/10F, mean age 58.6±14.4years). Twelve patients harboured a non functioning adenoma, 2 an ACTH, 5 a GH (one case of TSH co-secretion) and 2 a PRL-secreting PT. Before CK nine patients had normal while 11 presented impaired pitui...

The association between acromegaly and increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality is widely recognised. The aim of this retrospective multicentric study is to evaluate the impact of different therapeutic approaches on the progression of cardiovascular risk (CVR) in acromegalic patients. At diagnosis and last follow up (follow up time of 13 ± 8 years),we assessed BMI, blood pressure, glycaemic and lipid profile, GH and IGF1 levels in 199 patients with acromegaly (116...

Over the last two years, COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown have exerted a remarkable psychological burden in the general population. Such an impact is supposed to be even worse in acromegaly, known to induce a severe psychological impairment due to its somatic disfigurements and systemic comorbidities. The current observational study aimed at investigating the impact of COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown on psychological health in acromegalic patients as compared to non-acromegalic h...