Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: Postoperative nausea and vomiting is common after general anaesthesia and is reported by ~20–25% of all patients. The standard prophylaxis at the authors department is a single treatment of 4 mg of dexamethasone before initiating anesthesia. Dexamethasone is known to suppress ACTH and cortisol levels. The objective was to find out whether the standard PONV-prophylaxis of 4 mg of dexamethasone has an effect on postoperative levels of cortisol in patients undergo...

Objectives: TSH-producing pituitary adenomas account for 1–2% of all pituitary tumors and there is debate wether transsphenoidal surgery or medical treatment should be recommended as first-line treatment. This study summarizes the authors surgical experience and puts it into context of literature concerning non-surgical treatment of TSHomas.Methods: A retrospective analysis of 12 patients including imaging, laboratory testing, short-term and long-te...

Transsphenoidal surgery is the treatment of choice for acromegaly. Cure is defined by normalization of age-related IGF1 and sufficient suppression of GH in the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). We investigated, if early postoperative hormone testing gives reliable information whether complete resection of a tumor was achieved and compared these findings with further follow-up data.So far, 22 patients underwent OGTT within a week after surgery, starting...

The somatostatin analogue pasireotide is approved for the treatment of Cushing’s disease, where it achieves biochemical normalization in ~40% of patients. Predicting pasireotide resistance would help avoid unnecessary treatment. Pasireotide mediates its antisecretory action by binding to somatostatin receptor 5 (SSTR5). Almost half of corticotroph tumours carry mutations in the ubiquitin specific protease 8 (USP8) gene that encodes for a deubiquitinase. Pre...

IntroductionSomatic USP8 mutations are found in around 50% of Cushing’s disease tumours and are located in a single mutational hotspot that contains the recognition site for 14–3-3. These proteins bind to phosphoserine recognition motifs to alter the function and location of their target proteins, and are deregulated in several cancers. AimTo explore the expression and function of 14–3-3 prot...

IntroductionTP53 mutations have been rarely reported in pituitary tumours. Recently two exploratory exome sequencing studies have identified somatic TP53 mutations in a small number of functional corticotroph tumours (6/18 and 4/10) with USP8 wild type (wt) status, suggesting that they may be more frequent than previously thought. Nevertheless, the clinical impact of those mutations is still unknown.AimTo det...