Endocrine Abstracts

Despite considerable progress, the pathogenesis of pituitary tumours is largely unknown. Aberrant expression of oncogenes or tumour suppressors is thought to play a role in pituitary tumour initiation. The originating tumour cells may express abnormal patterns of growth factor receptors and may release excessive amounts of growth factors or angiogenic factors, which contribute in auto-/paracrine manner to the different speed and degree of progression of pituitary tumours. Here...

Objective: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a hallmark of the metabolic syndrome and has been shown to be an independent predictor of cardiovascular mortality. Although glucocorticoids and growth hormone are known to be implicated in its pathophysiology, it has only rarely been investigated in the context of patients with pituitary insufficiency or former cortisol excess.Design: Case-control study, including patients with biochemically control...

Neuroimaging techniques have improved over the last years; hence an “empty sella” is more often incidentally diagnosed. The term “empty sella” describes a missing pituitary gland in the sella turcica. Up to now, it is not known if routine endocrine assessment is necessary in patients with primary empty sella syndrome (PES) without clinical suspicion or history of neuroendocrine disorders.We performed a systematic literature research u...

A 22-year-old woman presented with weight gain (class I obesity), oligomenorrhea, impaired vision, and altered concentration. With suspected craniopharyngeoma she was treated with transcranial surgery; in fact for a suprasellar haemangioma. Post-operatively, she still presented an alteration in appetite with hyperphagia and excessive weight gain up to class III obesity. This syndrome is described as ‘hypothalamic obesity’ and results from any damage to the ventromedi...

The chemotherapeutic agent temozolomide (TMZ) has been applied for the treatment of pituitary carcinomas, atypical pituitary adenomas and prolactinomas resistant to dopamine agonist treatment with considerable success. Both shrinkage of the tumors and a drop of excessive hormone production were observed in TMZ-responsive patients. In order to clarify whether the TMZ-induced suppression of hormone secretion was a consequence of tumor shrinkage or caused by direct effects on hor...

Glucocorticoid feed-back in pituitary corticotrophs represses POMC transcription and ACTH release. Serum and glucocorticoid-induced kinase 1 (Sgk1) has been identified as an immediate early target of glucocorticoids in many tissues, however its expression and function in corticotrophs are unknown.We show here that Sgk1 is present in the human pituitary gland at both mRNA and protein levels. Double-immunohistochemistry revealed that Sgk1 is expressed in d...

The factors triggering pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (PanNET) progression are largely unknown. Here we investigated the role and mechanisms of the sumoylation enhancing protein RSUME in PanNET tumorigenesis. Immunohistochemical studies showed that RSUME is strongly expressed in normal human pancreas, in particular in β-cells. RSUME expression is reduced in insulinomas and is nearly absent in other types of PanNETs suggesting a role in PanNET tumorigenesis. In human panc...

Introduction: Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is a rare disease characterized by clinical features that show overlap with the ‘metabolic syndrome’. Pilot studies regarding the use facial image analysis software as a novel diagnostic tool in acromegaly and CS have shown promising results. Distinguishing CS patients from patients that show similar features without true hypercortisolism remains a challenge in clinical practice. To address this particular problem, we evalua...

Introduction: Sex steroid hormones exert a wide range of effects on metabolism. New techniques such as metabolomic profiling allow for a deeper insight into metabolic regulation. In epidemiological samples it has been demonstrated that most of these metabolites show sex-specific differences. However, if these differences are attributable to the effects of sex hormones or genetics is little understood so far.Methods: We performed targeted metabolomics pro...

Background: Pasireotide (Signifor®), a multireceptor-targeted somatostatin analogue, was initially approved in Europe and the USA in 2012 for treating adult patients with Cushing’s disease for whom surgery is not an option/has failed. This ‘expanded-access’ study allowed patients to receive pasireotide until regulatory approval was obtained in their country, and collected further safety/efficacy data. Here we report an interim analysis of this on...