Endocrine Abstracts

Objectives: The insulin tolerance test (ITT) is considered the gold standard to evaluate corticotropic function in patients with suspected pituitary disease, but is limited by several contraindications. As an alternative, we evaluated the diagnostic value of basal cortisol in serum and saliva.Methods: volunteers (V) and 61 patients with suspected pituitary disease (P) were enrolled into this study. Basal serum and saliva samples were collected simultaneo...

For somatostatin, five receptor subtypes (sst1-5) have been identified that are widely distributed in various endocrine tissues and tumors. Potent somatostatin analogs like octreotide, lanreotide and the new multiligand SOM230 – with different binding properties to the receptor subtypes - have been developed. We examined somatostatin receptor protein expression in 134 pituitary tumors of various etiologies. Immunostaining was performed with specific polyclonal anti...