Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Empty sella syndrome (EES) is a condition often discovered incidentally, where the sella turcica, the structure containing the pituitary gland, appears to be empty. Patients either remain asymptomatic or, rarely, manifest signs of declined pituitary function. Patients experiencing hypopituitarism are offered hormonal replacement. Autopsy studies estimated a 5% EES prevalence among healthy individuals.Case report: A 68-year-old post-menopaus...

Introduction: Cushing’s syndrome is a rare (0.004%) hormonal disorder, which develops due to hypercortisolaemia. Cushing’s disease refers to a corticothroph cell pituitary tumour overproducing ACTH, which induces abnormally increased cortisol production from the adrenal glands. Cushing’s disease is a causative factor of osteoporosis, hypertension, glucose intolerance and dyslipidaemia.Case report: A 50-year old woman was referred to our de...

Background and objectives: Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) originates from thyroid C-cells and is a calcitonin (CT) secreting tumour with aggressive behaviour. Surgery is recommended in all patients with basal or calcium-stimulated CT values of 100 pg/ml or higher due to the high probability of MTC. The objective of this study was to investigate the utility of calcium stimulation test for CT in order to distinguish MTC from C-cell Hyperplasia (CCH) preoperatively and to exam...

Introduction: Diagnostic and post-therapy radioiodine whole body scan (WBS) is used in the follow-up of differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) for the detection of local recurrence or remote metastasis. We report a case of false-positive uptake of radioiodine WBS.Case report: A 37-year-old female patient underwent subtotal thyroidectomy for multinodular goitre and histology revealed multifocal papillary thyroid carcinoma, of follicular type with three fo...

Introduction: The hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian and/or adrenal axis as well as the autonomous nervous system affect significantly the intensity of menopausal symptoms Pre-existing levels of stress may affect the individual perception of menopausal symptoms. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a structured stress management program to reduce levels of stress and severity of climacteric symptoms, in a sample of middle-aged Greek women.Methods: The sample...

Introduction: Critical illness, and sepsis in particular, drives adipose tissue lipolysis up (with triglycerides (TG) being split to free fatty acids (FFA) and glycerol (GLYC)) to meet increased energy demands. Few studies have addressed lipolysis with tissue microdialysis (MD).Aim: To assess indexes of lipolysis in septic patients with and without shock.Subjects and methods: The study included 110 men and 73 women (mean age+<small...

Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (LpPLA2) is a member of the phospholipaseA2 super family of enzymes, and is upregulated in arterial inflammation, obesity and cardiovascular disease. The other isoforms, iPLA2 and cPLA2, appear to contribute to inflammation through production of lipid mediators. The role of PLA2 in human adipose tissue (AT) is unclear, therefore we sought to i) characterise PLA2 isoforms in lean, obese, T2DM abdominal subcutaneous (AbdSc) and omental (Om...

Mitochondria are essential for synthesising ATP required for cellular metabolism. In response to changes in their cellular environment, mitochondria are able to alter their morphology and abundance through the balance of “fusion” and “fission” events. The aim of this study was to profile the expression of mitochondrial genes in the abdominal subcutaneous (AbSc) adipose tissue (AT) of lean, obese and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) individuals and determine ...

Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2) is a member of the phospholipase A2 super family of enzymes that hydrolyse phospholipids, and is upregulated in arterial inflammation, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Secreted soluble Lp-PLA2 (sPLA2) increases arterial inflammation in addition to cytosolic calcium dependent PLA2 (cPLA2) and calcium independent PLA2 (iPLA2). These studies examined the influence of adipose tissue (AT) depots (abdominal subcutaneous (Abd Sc), ...

Introduction: Acromegaly is well known to induce hypertrophy and hyperplasia in many organs, i.e. thyroid gland, colon, prostate. This action is presumably exerted by the elevated GH and IGF1 levels. In our study, we investigated the alterations of the adrenal glands seen in acromegaly.Aim: To assess the changes in adrenal morphology and functional status in a series of patients with acromegaly.Subjects and methods: Fifty-four acro...