Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The prevalence of hyperthyroidism in patients admitted in Internal Medicine at Spanish hospitals is 0.8%. Proper diagnosis and management of HTD in these patients is still a challenge and therefore, the analyses of the factors involved in the prognosis and survival is of interest.Methods: Data from the minimum-data-set (MDS) of Spanish National health System were collected during 2005–2012 from discharged patients of Internal Medicine ...

Background: Bronchial carcinoids (BC) are rare tumors originating from endocrine cells dispersed in the respiratory epithelium. The main BC treatment is surgery, which is not feasible for large, infiltrating and metastatic disease. In these settings, medical therapy is often tried. Therefore it is important to identify new therapeutic targets and new molecules capable of providing adequate medical treatment for patients with BC. Sunitinib, is an oral, small-molecule, multi-tar...

Adrenocortical cancer (ACC) is still orphan of medical treatment. Our preliminary data show that EGF induces ACC cell lines proliferation (+20 and +10% vs control in SW13 and NCI-H295 cell lines respectively). EGF receptor (EGFR) expression is higher and ubiquitous in SW13 cells, while it is weaker in NCI-H295 cells, where it is present only on the membrane. Aim of our study is to analyze EGFR downstream signalling in ACC cell lines.EGF induces VEGF synt...

Introduction: Neuroendocrine cancer of the ampulla of Vater area belongs to the most rare GEP-neuroendocrine tumors (NET). In the literature, there are few reports of extremely malignant course of this cancer. Among 242 patients with NET from the Department of Endocrinology in 2009–2013, 58 pancreatic NET were discovered, among which seven patients had neuroendocrine cancer of the ampulla of Vater. The aim of this study was to determine the clinical characteristics, stagi...

Introduction: CDKN1B gene, which encodes a cyclin-dependent kinase (Cdk) inhibitor, regulates the progression throughout G1 to S cell cycle progression. CDKN1B loss-of-function germinal mutations cause the multiple endocrine neoplasia type 4 syndrome (MEN4).Objective: The aim of the study is the functional characterization of a new 4 bp deletion in CDKN1B 5′-UTR region, identified in an acromegalic patient.Materials and metho...

Disruption of DNA damage response pathways results in an accumulation of genetic mutations, gene amplifications and chromosome alterations, which are key initiating factors in cellular transformation and oncogenesis. PBF is a multifunctional proto-oncogene which is overexpressed in thyroid, pituitary and breast cancers, with roles in cell transformation, invasion and transporter regulation. Recently, we reported that targeted transgenic expression of PBF promotes genetic insta...

Background: Most thyroid specific genes are transcriptionally regulated by TSH-TSHR signalling and T4-driven negative feedback of TSH secretion at the pituitary. However, local autoregulation of transcription has been described from IGF-IGFR, follicular thyroglobulin, or iodine. We aimed to investigate the TSH dependency of thyroid transcriptional regulation in the Dehal1 knockout, devoid of iodide-recycling capacity from iodotyrosines.Methods: ...

Objective: The saline infusion test (SIT) is a standard confirmatory test for primary aldosteronism (PA) and based on impaired aldosterone suppression in PA compared to essential hypertension (EH). In the past, aldosterone was quantified using immunoassays (IA). Due to the more widespread use of liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in clinical routine, we aimed at a method-specific aldosterone threshold for the diagnosis of PA during SIT and explored the d...

Introduction: Even though it is well known that long-term complications, such as renal insufficiency and brain calcifications can occur in patients with hypoparathyroidism (HPT), the risk of cardiovascular diseases still remains unclear.Objective: To perform a systematic assessment of cardiovascular function in a well-characterized cohort of patients with HPT compared to population-based controls.Methods: 133 patients with chronic ...

Background: The expression of thyroid-specific genes [thyroglobulin (Tg) and sodium iodide symporter (NIS)] is modulated by several cytokines (IL-1, IFNγ, TGF-ß) and it is down-regulated in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT). Also, lymphocytic infiltration and inflammation in HT results in intra-thyroidal accumulation of hyaluronan (HA). During inflammation, HA can be degraded into small fragments, able to up-regulate pro-inflammatory genes by stimulating the toll-li...