Endocrine Abstracts

Recent reports have proven gastric pH as key for both dissolution and bioavailability of oral thyroxine. This is clinically relevant in patients with gastric disorders to tailor an individualized treatment. In vitro, the softgel preparation of thyroxine possess a superior dissolution profile at increasing pH than the tablet T4. No data are available analyzing the correlation between the gastric pH and the softgel T4 performance in vivo and the present study i...

Abstract: Gastrointestinal disorders may impair oral thyroxine (T4) absorption by either affecting the tablet dissolution or adsorbing the hormone in the first tract of intestinal lumen. Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an inflammatory disease whose interference with oral T4 treatment has been suggested but no evidence have been presented so far. This study was aimed at examining the presence of UC and its possible interference in the pharmacologic thyroid homeostasis, in a large co...

Purpose: Skeletal muscle has been recognized as a thyroid hormones (THs) target for contractile function, regeneration, metabolism and glucose disposal. Despite a role in regulating muscle development has been described, little is known about the role of THs in regulating muscle homeostasis in a pathological state such as food deprivation induced atrophy. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether thyroid hormones may hamper the fasting induced skeletal muscle atrophy an...

Human type 2 deiodinase (hD2) regulates T3 production in placenta during trophoblast development. hD2 mRNA and protein levels are elevated only during the first trimester of gestation then becoming barely detectable. These variations are similar to those of chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a well-known marker of early gestation secreted by the cytotrophoblast. A peculiar promoter architecture of the gene encoding the alpha subunit of hCG allows a CRE-mediated synergism between cA...

Increasing evidence suggests a relevant role for thyroid gland in maintaining hypophysis-thyroid homeostasis even in patients treated with oral thyroxine. Aim of the study was to compare the daily dose of thyroxine required to attain subnormal serum TSH levels in patients with nontoxic goitre before and following total thyroidectomy. To address this question we have studied: a) 15 patients (8 women and 7 men; median age=53 years) with nontoxic goitre (NTG) and no evidence of a...

Repeated pregnancy loss (RPL), defined as two or more spontaneous abortions, may be associated with autoimmune thyroiditis (AT), either isolated or associated with polyautoimmune disorders (PD), which include antiphospholipid syndrome. An increased occurrence of RPL has been reported in patients with isolated AT but very few data are available on the influence of concurrent auto-aggressive disorders on RPL and this represented the aim of our study. A cohort of 1765 consecutive...

The presence and the role of CD20+ T cells in humans has been described in autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. In healthy subjects, CD3+CD20+ T cells are detected in all lymphatic organs and in the cerebrospinal fluid and represent about 5% of circulating T cells. Some reports described their production of high levels of IL-17A and/or IFN-γ. This study was aimed at investigating the behavior of CD3<sup...

Hypothyroid patients with gastric disorders require a higher dose of oral thyroxine (T4) to reach target serum TSH. In vitro evidence supports the notion that the variations of gastric pH may also interfere with T4 dissolution profile. The present study is aimed at confirming in vivo the supposed correlation between the gastric pH, directly measured during endoscopy, and the therapeutic dose of thyroxine using a controlled treatment schedule. A total of 61 tablet T4-t...