Endocrine Abstracts

Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is a severe disease caused by an endogenous glucocorticoid excess and it is correlated to an increased morbidity and mortality especially for sepsis and cardiovascular diseases, while hypertension, glucose intolerance or diabetes mellitus, and dyslipidemia are the most common systemic complications. The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the mortality and morbidity of patients with CS admitted at the Department of Endocrinology and Onc...

Cabergoline (CAB) was demonstrated to be effective in normalizing cortisol secretion in a subset of patients with Cushing’s disease (CD). The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of chronic treatment with CAB on clinical, metabolic and hormonal parameters in CD patients. Twenty-six patients with CD (11 males, 15 females, 12–72 years) entered the study. Patients were divided into two groups, responders and non responders, according to the achievement or not of ...

Women with acromegaly present often menstrual irregularity, anovularity and infertility. A direct role of GH and IGF1 excess on the hypothalamus–pituitary–gonadal axis, hyperprolactinemia and an impaired gonadotrophin secretion related to a tumor mass effect, or polycystic ovary syndrome have been suggested as possible mechanisms related to infertility. However, no systematic data are available on fertility in these patients. The aim of this retrospective study was t...

Somatostatin (SSTRs) and dopamine (DRs) receptors are expressed in adrenal tumors. It has been demonstrated in pituitary and neuroendocrine tumors that somatostatin-dopamine chimeric molecules, namely dopastatins, which bind both somatostatin (SST2 and/or SST5) and dopamine (D2) receptors, exert a more potent action compared with the single receptor agonists in experimental settings. The aims of this study were to evaluate the expression of DRs and SSTRs, and the effects of do...

The dopamine agonist cabergoline has been found to be effective in inducing normalization of cortisol secretion in 25–50% of patients with Cushing’s disease after long-term treatment. Moreover, tumor shrinkage have been documented in selected patients with pituitary corticotroph tumors. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of cabergoline withdrawal in patients with a stable normalization of cortisol secretion and stable or absent visualization of p...

Subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (SCS) is a mild autonomous cortisol hypersecretion without specific clinical syndrome of glucocorticoid excess. The aim of this study was to compare cardiac structure and function in patients with adrenal incidentaloma. Twenty patients and 20 sex- and age-matched healthy controls entered the study: among patients, 11 had SCS and the remaining nine had normal cortisol secretion All patients and controls were submitted to Doppler echocardiogra...

The first-line treatment of Cushing’s disease is surgery, although it is effective in inducing a long-term remission in around 50% of patients with Cushing’s disease (CD). Nowadays, no pituitary tumor-directed medical treatment is available with the exception of cabergoline, which has been recently demonstrated to control cortisol secretion without major side effects in around 40% of patients with Cushing’s disease. Cabergoline has been recently demonstrated to ...

Background: Patients with adrenal incidentalomas and possible autonomous cortisol secretion (pACS) suffer from a high rate of cardiovascular events and mortality. We have previously showed that left ventricular mass index (LVMi) is higher in patients with pACS, compared with patients with non-functioning adenomas (NFA). To date, the management of pACS is still controversial, with a lack of consensus regarding the benefits of surgery.Objectives: This pros...

Background: Overt hypercortisolism is highly associated with venous thromboembolism. Patients with Cushing’s syndrome (CS) typically show an alteration of the intrinsic coagulation pathway, especially an increase in factor VIII (f-VIII), and increased levels of coagulation inhibitors (i.e., antithrombin III) as a compensatory response. Mild autonomous cortisol secretion (MACS) has been variably associated with higher risk of cardiovascular events and mortality compared to...

Context: Significant uncertainty exists about the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasonographic (US) features used to predict the risk of thyroid cancer in the pediatric population. Moreover, there are not specific indications for thyroid nodule evaluation in patients during the transition age.Objective: The meta-analysis aimed to address the following question: which thyroid nodule US features have the highest accuracy in predicting malignancy in the transiti...