Endocrine Abstracts

A 73 years old man came to our observation for severe dysphagia and loss of weight (10 kg in 1 month). About 30 years before he had myocardial infarction and he underwent coronary artery bypass graft. One week before the first medical evaluation, patient suspended all drugs per os because he could not swallow pills and food. Thyroid function test revealed a severe hyperthyroidism (FT3 11.9 pg/ml; FT4 40 pg/ml; TSH <0.01 μU/ml). Anti-TSH ...

Subclinical CS, mild hypercortisolism without overt clinical manifestations, is the most frequent (5–8%) hormonal abnormality detected in patients with secreting adrenal incidentalomas.Unclear clinical features and mild hypercortisolism make the diagnosis problematic, although laboratory criteria have recently been reviewed. In these cases, scintiscan is a central tool to define the adrenal functional activity.A 60-year-old ma...

The coexistence of pheochromocytoma and hyperreninemia secondary to renal artery stenosis, which both represent important causes of juvenile hypertension, has been reported in Literature, while association between pheochromocytoma and reninoma has never been described.We evaluated a 24-year-old boy, which came to our attention for severe hypertension, unresponsive to anti-hypertensive polytherapy. In 1996, because of elevated calcitonin levels (180 pg/ml...

Hirsutism affects 5–10% of women of reproductive age and may be the initial sign of an androgen disorder. We describe two cases of occult Sertoli-Leydig ovarian cell tumor suspected only on the basis of clinical and laboratory features.The first patient, a 42 year-old woman came to our attention for hirsutism. Several blood samples showed a very high testosterone concentration (~4 ng/ml), while non-ovarian causes of hyperandrogenism were excluded. A...

Aim: We compared effectiveness of partial withdrawal of levothyroxine (L-T4) to the use of recombinant human TSH (rhTSH) in preparation for Tg testing. We also evaluated clinical aspects and quality-of-life (QOL) during both regimens.Materials and methods: Ten consecutive patients, previously treated with total thyroidectomy and radioiodine ablation for DTC, underwent rhTSH protocol and, after 15 days, reduced their L-T4 dose by 50% for 5 weeks. At the f...