Endocrine Abstracts

Cushing’s disease (CD) is the most common cause of endogenous Cushing’s syndrome in children and adolescents and represents a rare cause of short stature. A 14-year-old boy came to our attention for progressive weight gain and short stature. Birth length and weight were normal; clinical history was negative for use of glucocorticoids. At examination, height was 140 cm (3th centile), weight was 37.7 kg (10th centile). Tanner stage was: G2, PH 3, testis 3 ml. Hypothyro...

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...

Hyperthyroidism associated to hyperthyrotropinemia is a rare condition which can be due to two different causes: resistance to thyroid hormones and TSH secreting adenoma. The differential diagnosis is not easy.We have observed 8 patients with hyperthyroidism associated to inappropriately elevated TSH. All patients had similar basal levels of thyroid hormones and 7 out of 8 had a multinodular goiter.Four out of 8 patients showed lac...

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...