Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Phthalates are suspected to influence thyroid function in epidemiologic and experimental animal studies. The aim of the study was to investigate the ability of primary human thyroid cell cultures to metabolise phthalates and a possible concentration-dependent response of phthalates on thyroglobulin (Tg) secretion.Methods: Human thyrocytes obtained from thyroidectomies were cultured to confluent monolayers. These were exposed to DEHP in conc...

Background: Gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs) have highly heterogeneous growth rates, yielding broad ranges of radiographic imaging intervals in standard guidelines, creating uncertainty for clinicians and patients. Chromogranin A (CgA) is released by GEP-NET cells and has been associated with increased tumor burden. However, clinical utility of CgA measurement has been limited by the lack of prospective validation studies and by different sensitivity for...

Introduction: Italy is considered a country with high prevalence of 25 OH vitamin D deficiency. Changes in vitamin D serum levels were linked with the onset and progression of several diseases, including osteoporosis and cardiovascular diseases. The hypopituitary patients show several comorbidities like cardiovascular diseases and osteoporosis.Purpose: To evaluate the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in hypopituitary patients.Pat...

Thyroid hormone (TH) plays a major role in nervous system development. Its deficiency causes severe brain malfunction, which in the human results in cretinism. With the recent availability of new imaging techniques, as small animal PET, it is now possible to study cerebral metabolism in vivo. The aim of this work was to study the in vivo effect of TH on the brain of hypothyroid rats in terms of metabolic function, using PET scanning. For the experiment we used th...

Infertility is a global health problem that affects about 15% of couples and approximately half of infertility cases are associated with male factors. Oxidative Stress (OS) is reported as one of the major causes of male infertility, mainly due to spermatozoa’s vulnerability to the attack of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Infertile couples often recur to assisted reproductive technology (ART) to achieve a successful pregnancy. However, ART protocols also increase the expos...

Objective: Currently, 2–3% of the population of the UK and US receive glucocorticoid (GC) therapy. Significant adverse effects are not confined to chronic use; recurrent short-course administration is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. The efficacy of GC therapy is not in doubt but data about the cumulative dose responsible for adverse effects during GC treatment are still lacking. The aim of this study was to test the impact of 7 days of 10 or 15 mg of Pr...

Mitotane (o,p’DDD) represents the most effective treatment of adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC). However, molecular mechanisms of mitotane action remain poorly understood. Mitochondrial (mt) impact of mitotane has previously been suggested but not yet fully validated. We investigated functional consequences of mitotane exposure on mitochondrial steroidogenesis, respiratory chain activity and biogenesis, using human adrenocortical secreting H295R and non-secreting SW13 cells....

Objective: Papillary thyroid microcarcinoma (PTM) is a malignant thyroid tumour with potential multifocality and diameter ≤1 cm. Usually is found like incidentaloma, and the epidemiology is not clearly established. We have analysed their epidemiologic in La Palma Island at last 10 years.Patients and methods: We collected all cases of PTM diagnosed in 345 consecutive thyroid surgeries performed for whichever benign thyroid disease (thyrogloss duct c...

Primary HPT shows a great variability in its clinical course and severity, which might be related to polymorphic variants of the CASR gene. The aim of the study was to evaluate the frequency of two known CASR single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), i.e. G/T at codon 986 and G/A at codon 990, in a homogenous North-Italian cohort of PHPT patients compared with a sex and age matched healthy population and the possible correlation of these CASR gene variants with the clinical and ...

Pheochromocytomas are neuroendocrine tumors able to synthesise cathecholamines as well as to metabolise them in metanephrines (NM,M). We assayed Adrenaline, NorAdrenaline, Dopamine and metanephrines in serum (p) and urine (u), and the chromogranin A. We measured 11 parameters (Ap, Au, NAp, NAu, Du, MNp, MNu, Mp, Mp, 3Metu, CgA). Catecholamines and metanephrines were performed using HPLC with electrochemical detection, and CgA with an immunometric as...