Endocrine Abstracts

During the past several years the wide application of sensitive brain imaging techniques (CT, MRI) has led to an increasing recognition of asymptomatic lesions in the pituitary. Although their etiology covers a wide range of pathologies, most incidentally discovered pituitary lesions are benign adenomas, ranging in size from micro- (<10 mm) to macro- (>10 mm) adenomas. Micro-incidentalomas are very common, with a reported incidence in normal individuals of 4–20%. ...

Background: Individuals with adrenal insufficiency (AI) receive life-long glucocorticoid (GC) replacement which often exceeds physiological daily GC production, with negative effects on cardiometabolic and bone health parameters.Objective: Assessment of cardiometabolic and bone health markers in postmenopausal females with AI in relation to the GC dose.Methods: We retrospectively collected 114 postmenopausal women with AI (37 with ...

Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is a disease entity that through hypercortisolism affects all body’s tissues leading to increased morbidity, decreased quality of life and mortality. Muscles are among the tissues primarily affected. However, data on the impact of endogenous hypercortisolism on functional muscle capacity and daily physical activity levels are scarce. We studied 23 subjects with endogenous CS (mean age: 40.73±2.17 years) and 22 healthy aged and sex matched...

The diagnosis of subclinical hypercortisolism (SH) is a challenging issue, especially as the high prevalence of adrenal incidentalomas (AI) is increasingly recognized. The diagnosis of subclinical hypercortisolism relies on a combination of tests that include overnight (ODST) or low dose dexamethasone suppression (LDDST), plasma ACTH, and 24-h urinary free cortisol (UFC). Late night salivary cortisol (LNSC) has been successfully used in the diagnosis of Cushing’s syndrome...

Adrenal incidentalomas (AI) are a common finding in patients studied by abdominal imaging and approximately 9–17% is found bilaterally. So far, the potential role of hypothalomo-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis dysregulation in the pathogenesis of AI, especially of those found bilaterally, has not been addressed. The DEXA-CRH test has been previously used to detect dysregulation of the HPA axis; herein, it was used to assess ACTH and cortisol responses in a large group of pat...

The aim of the study was to examine the therapeutic trends and the long-term outcome of available therapeutic modalities for acromegaly in a single center over a 40 year period.We retrospectively studied 300 acromegalic patients (131 men, 169 women, 153 macroadenomas and 147 microadenomas) from 1970 until 2010; 154 patients were diagnosed before 1990 (group A) and 146 after 1990 (group B). Outcome was evaluated by IGF1 and GH (random plus post OGTT) meas...

Multiple endocrine neoplasia type2A (MEN 2A) is a syndrome of familial cancers characterized by medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC), pheochromocytoma and hyperplasia of the parathyroid glands. RET protooncogene is the responsible gene for MEN 2A; in more than 96% of MEN 2A families mutations in RET exon 10 or exon 11 are identified. Herein we report a MEN 2A case affected by a mutation (Gly533Cys) in exon 8. A 66-yr-old male patient was referred to our Department due ...

The primary aim of this study, the largest European, single evaluation, observational trial to date, was to evaluate the impact of acromegaly on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with biochemically documented active disease, receiving Sandostatin® LAR® at a dose prescribed by their physician for at least 3 months. Secondary objectives were to investigate the relationships between HRQoL and subpopulations based on exploratory var...