Endocrine Abstracts

Background: The dexamethasone suppression test (DST) is among essential tests for hypercortisolism diagnosis. Due to high sensitivity and specificity, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is replacing obsolete immunoassays (IA) for steroid measurement. However, exhaustive data about IA and LC-MS/MS concordance in the frame of DST are still not available.Aim: To compare cortisol measurements by two routine IAs and LC-MS/MS in basal (F...

Background: Evaluation of steroid replacement therapy (SRT) in adrenal insufficiency (AI) is challenging for the lack of reliable parameters. Measurement of salivary cortisol and cortisone emerged as a non-invasive tool for AI management, however poorly investigated. Aim: To analyse the cortisol and cortisone circadian rhythm in normal controls (NC) and patients with primary AI (PAI) under different SRTs, and to identify useful biomarkers. <p class="...

Background: Acylcarnitines and sphingomyelins are key players of lipid metabolism at cytosolic, vesicular and cell membrane level. Their metabolism was found deranged in diseases of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. Little information is available about levels of these compounds in the bloodstream and their circadian fluctuations. Dried blood spots (DBS) allow multiple autonomous and painless collections per day. However, poor biological validation data are available ab...

Introduction: Lipidomics is an emerging approach to characterize circadian rhythm alterations due to diseases of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. Glycerophospholipids are membrane structural constituents and key players in cell signalling, homeostasis and inflammatory and immune responses. Among blood derivatives, serum may reflect the soluble fraction, whereas dried blood spot (DBS) may reflect the cell membrane fraction of these lipids. However, little information is...

Introduction: Recent studies demonstrated that circulating concentration of many metabolites fluctuates with circadian rhythmicity. However, detailed information on amino acid and biogenic amine daily variations is still lacking. Dried blood spot (DBS) sampling appears to be a convenient tool for studies requiring multiple daily sampling.Aim: To verify the validity of DBS as a suitable device, we compared serum and DBS levels and changes along the day of...

Context: Autonomous cortisol secretion (ACS) has been associated with a higher prevalence of osteoporosis and fragility fractures in several studies. However, the data rely on heterogeneous studies and criteria for osteoporosis screening in this population are still debated.Objective: To assess the prevalence of fragility fractures and contributing factors in a large cohort of patients with adrenal incidentalomas.Methods: We review...

Background and aim: The relationship between sarcopenia and overt cortisol excess as in Cushing’s syndrome is well-known. However, only a few studies investigated the relationship between autonomous cortisol secretion (ACS) in adrenal incidentalomas and skeletal muscle mass. The aims of our study were to analyze the skeletal muscle mass in patients with adrenal incidentalomas and to investigate the correlations with hormonal data.Methods: We enrolle...

Background: Adrenal lipid poor adenoma (LPA) and adrenocortical cancer (ACC) may overlap in computerized tomography (CT). Radiomics recently emerged as new tool for malignant behavior identification.Aim: To assess radiomics utility for identification of ACC and LPA in adrenocortical masses with unenhanced (UE) CT scan attenuation≥10 Hounsfield Unit (HU).Methods: We retrospectively enrolled 50 patients, 38 radiologically defin...

Background: Adrenal insufficiency patient (AIP) care is mostly based on symptoms or clinical signs of inadequate glucocorticoid replacement treatment (GRT). Salivary cortisol (F) and cortisone (E) recently emerged as new tools for AIP management, although poorly employed in clinical practice.Aim: To assess associations between salivary glucocorticoid measures and life quality, anxiety depressive symptoms, sleep quality in AIP.Metho...

Computerized tomography (CT) texture analysis (TA) provides a valuable amount of quantitative data on single voxels and their relationship in a target lesions, giving additional value to the CT scan. CTTA has been applied to several oncologic diseases. We aimed to correlate the data derived from CTTA of pheochromocytoma to clinical, biochemical and histopathological data in 30 consecutive patients. Pheochromocytoma was confirmed at histology. The CTTA was performed on unenhanc...