Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The concept of life-long medical therapy for acromegaly has recently been challenged. Hormonal remission for up to 48 months after stopping somatostatin analogues in acromegalic patients has recently been reported. Herein, we present a further case showing the longest remission yet in growth hormone levels after somatostatin analogue treatment.Case: In 1987, a 43 year old man was diagnosed with acromegaly [nadir GH on oral glucose tolerance...

Background: TSH-receptor stimulating antibodies are implicated in the pathophysiology of Graves’ disease (GD). The detection of TSH-receptor antibodies (TSHR-Abs) is routinely performed by assays measuring thyrotropin-binding inhibitor immunoglobulin and new generation assays are reported to have high sensitivity and specificity in GD. The differentiation of hyperthyroidism (GD or toxic multinodular goiter (TMG) or toxic adenoma (TA)) is important for planning the therapy...

Background: Insulin-induced hypoglycaemia (ITT) is considered the gold standard method for the evaluation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis. The standard short Synacthen test (SST) has been proposed as an alternative, but it may be associated with falsely reassuring results and potentially serious sequelae.Aim: To compare the serum cortisol response achieved in the SST with the one obtained during the ITT in patients with hypothalamo-pituitary di...

Background: Data on the relationship between the hormonal response to somatostatin analogues and morphological subtype of somatotroph adenomas are sparse. We have previously shown that nadir GH <1.75 μg/l on the octreotide suppression test (OST) has positive and negative predictive value 94 and 100%, respectively in predicting achievement of ‘safe’ GH levels following treatment with octreotide LAR (Karavitaki et al. 2005).Aim: T...

Background: Non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFAs) are slow growing tumours with reported 5-year recurrence rates following resection up to 51%. The time point that it is safe to stop surveillance imaging is not clearly defined.Aim: To clarify the time spectrum of recurrence in patients with NFAs offered solely surgery as primary treatment and to estimate the safe time to stop surveillance pituitary imaging.Methods: Case-note an...

Introduction: Data on the mortality of patients with non-functioning pituitary macroadenoma (NFA) are limited. Aim: To assess the mortality of patients with NFA and predictive factors.Patients/methods: All patients presenting to our Department with NFA between 1963 and 2011 were studied. Status was recorded as either dead or alive, as of 31 December 2011.Results: 546 patients (333 males) were identified (median age at surgery 58.7 ...