Endocrine Abstracts

In this observational, retrospective, multicenter study, we analyzed data from 300 patients with pituitary incidentaloma followed in two Italian Hospital Center. We observed a predominance of female patients (65%), with an a mean age at diagnosis of 49 years (higher in men than women, 57 vs 45 years old). The main reason to perform imaging were neurological symptoms not related to the presence of adenomas (56%). Most cases were microadenomas (56%), and macroadenomas were more ...

Introduction: Acromegaly is characterised by chronic exposure to high GH and IGF1 levels that leads to increased bone turnover. Regardless of BMD value, acromegalic patients seem to have an increased vertebral fracture risk probably due to a reduction of bone quality. Trabecular bone score (TBS) is a new index used for assessing bone microarchitecture. In this study TBS was used for the first time to analyze bone quality in acromegaly.Methods: 16 new acr...

Introduction: The optimal treatment duration for prolactinomas to minimize reccurences is not clear. 2011 Endocrine Society Guidelines suggested that cabergoline withdrawal may be safely undertaken after 2 years in patients achieving normoprolactinemia and tumor volume reduction.Materials and methods: We analyzed 74 patients (mean age=46.9±14.4, M/F=19/56, macro/micro=18/56) bearing a prolactinoma. Patients were divided in 3 groups: Group A (23) tre...

Endocrine Connections 2013 2 196–207. DOI: 10.1530/EC-13-0049...

Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a rare neuroendocrine tumor of the parafollicular thyroid C cells. Although somatostatin (SS) receptors (SSTs) are expressed by MTCs, treatment with octreotide, specific for SST2, has shown poor efficacy in reducing MTC proliferation, whereas pasireotide, a multi-receptor SS analogue with preferential binding to SST5, has recently demonstrated antiproliferative effects in persistent postoperative MTCs. In vitro data in human MTC ce...

Cancer cells and embryonic stem cells share many key biological properties and have common genetic signature: transcription factors regulating self-renewal and differentiation have been found expressed in human cancer cells. We focused our attention on TBX1, the gene involved in 22q11.2 microdeletion/DiGeorge syndrome, which is involved in heart, thymic and parathyroid cells differentiation.Real-time PCR, western blot and immunohistochemistry de...

Tumour-associated fibroblasts (TAFs) are important players in tumour formation, growth, enhancement and metastasis. We firstly investigated the TAFs component in human parathyroid neoplasia from patients with primary hyperparathyroidism. Alpha-smooth muscle actin (alpha-SMA) has been used to identify activated TAFs (myofibroblasts). Culturing explants from parathyroid adenomas (PA, n=5), large spindle-shaped alpha-SMA+ cells outgrew from explants and the expression of...

Introduction: Pituitary incidentalomas are lesions discovered on an imaging study performed for an unrelated reason. Their frequency varies among 0.2–38% and it is continuously increasing due to the development of neuroimaging techniques. The aim of the study is to investigate clinical and biochemical characteristics of 205 consecutive patients (70% female, mean age 53.6±18.2 years) with incidental pituitary adenoma (IPA) followed at our center from 1990 to present.<...

Generously supported by IPSEN)-->A highly polymorphic microsatellite in the IGF-I gene promoter composed of variable cytosine–adenine (CA) repeats (n=10–24) has been linked to IGF-I levels, risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases with conflicting results. Aim of this study was to investigate the impact of this polymorphism on the response to rhGH (mean dose 0.34±0.14 mg/day) in adult GH-deficient (GHD) pa...

Introduction: A highly polymorphic microsatellite, comprising a variable length of a cytosine–adenosine (CA) repeat sequence, has been identified in the promoter region of IGF-I gene. The number of CA repeats ranges between 10 and 24 and the most common allele in the Caucasian population contains 19 CA (192 bp) repeats. Several studies investigated the relationship between this polymorphism and IGF-I levels, with conflicting results. Aim of this study was to investigate t...