Endocrine Abstracts

Pretibial myxedema (PM) is a rare extrathyroidal manifestation of Graves’ disease for which there is no specific treatment. When the clinical picture is markedly evident, topical treatment with steroid ointments is practised. There has been previous experience of subcutaneous injections with steroids by using standard needles, but this procedure caused nodular degeneration of the skin. Aim of the present study was to experiment a novel modality of treatment with the injec...

In assessing TAO, orbital CT scan allows measurement of extraocular muscle and optic nerve dimensions but it is useful mainly for a qualitative analysis and cannot be used in the clinical score of the disease. Aim of the present study was to seek a number which could express the expansion of the orbital tissue and be used in grading the severity of TAO. 39 TAO patients and 24 control subjects were studied. We have measured the orbital area (OA) on the central axial section of ...

We are conducting an open study on the treatment of Graves’ disease (GD) and thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO) with the monoclonal antibody to CD-20, rituximab (RTX) (MabThera, Hoffman-Roche, Basel). RTX induces depletion of B cells and GD is typically a B cell dependent autoimmune disease. We present preliminary results on 7 patients with GD and TAO at different clinical stages: 3 women with newly diagnosed GD and initial TAO; 1 woman with GD and moderate-severe TA...