Endocrine Abstracts

Parathyroid carcinoma (PC) is an extremely rare endocrine malignancy of the parathyroid glands, representing less than 1% of all parathyroid neoplasms. PC is characterized by an excessive secretion of parathyroid hormone (PTH) and severe hypercalcemia. In contrast to parathyroid adenoma, the prognosis for patients with PC is poor, with an overall survival rate of 78-85% and 49-70% respectively at 5 and 10 years after diagnosis, due to the commonly unmanageable hypercalcaemia, ...

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify changes in thyroid hormone metabolism occurring in different thyroid functional states and to evaluate tissue response to thyroid hormone changes.Methods: Two hundred subjects (137 F, 63 M, mean age: 50.3±14.4 years) waiting to be treated or treated with total thyroidectomy for differentiated thyroid cancer were enrolled in this study. Thyroid function was investigated measuring TSH, fT4 and fT3, and ...

Background: The evaluation of health-related Quality of Life (QoL) is becoming a key component in clinical assessment of thyreopathic patients, especially those thyroidectomized for differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) and treated with levothyroxine (LT4).Aim: To evaluate QoL in different thyroid states in patients treated with total thyroidectomy for DTC and correlate it with thyroid function tests.Methods: Two hundred subjects (13...

Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is one of the most lethal endocrine malignancy, with a mean survival of about 6 months. Until now, the most effective therapy for ATC comprises a multimodal treatment protocol, including surgery, chemotherapy (doxorubicin and cisplatin), and hyperfractionated accelerated external beam radiotherapy, with a median patient survival of 10 months. A possible increase in the effectiveness of the treatment could be achieved testing the sensitivity of &...

Introduction: Everolimus is an oral mTOR inhibitor that exerts antineoplastic effects inhibiting cell proliferation, survival and angiogenesis. Its activity in advanced neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) has been demonstrated in controlled trials and everolimus was approved by the FDA for the treatment of progressive, advanced pNETs in May 2011.Materials and methods: We treated with everolimus, at the dosage of 10 mg once daily, 14 patients with advanced, prog...

The coexistence of pheochromocytoma and hyperreninemia secondary to renal artery stenosis, which both represent important causes of juvenile hypertension, has been reported in Literature, while association between pheochromocytoma and reninoma has never been described.We evaluated a 24-year-old boy, which came to our attention for severe hypertension, unresponsive to anti-hypertensive polytherapy. In 1996, because of elevated calcitonin levels (180 pg/ml...

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) activity is a relevant component of energy expenditure in mammals. Moreover, BAT constitutes an active site of glucose and lipid draining and, therefore, BAT activity is also a relevant actor in the control of glycemia and lipidemia. Recent years, possibly because of the awareness that active BAT is present in adult humans, have witnessed a burst in the identification of novel endocrine factors released by peripheral tissues that can act on BAT beyon...

Background: Several lines of evidence support the view that sarcopenia and osteoporosis are strictly connected. However, the capability of the updated sarcopenia definition to capture the concomitant presence of osteoporosis has been scarcely investigated. Aim: To assess the association between sarcopenia defined according to the revised criteria from the European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP2) and osteoporosis in women with a frag...

We conducted a survey during the first pandemic wave of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on a large group of osteoporotic patients to evaluate the general conditions of osteoporotic patients and the impact of the pandemic on the management of osteoporosis, finding high compliance to treatments and low COVID-19 lethality. In a telephone survey conducted from April to May 2020, patients from the Osteoporosis Center, Clinic of Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases of Umberto I ...

Very Low-Calorie Ketogenic Diet (VLCKD) is currently a promising approach for the treatment of obesity. However, little is known about the side effects since most of the studies reporting them were carried out in normal weight subjects following ketogenic diet for other purposes than obesity. Thus, the aims of the study were: 1) to investigate the safety of VLCKD in subjects with obesity; 2) if VLCKD-related side effects could have an impact on its efficacy. In this prospectiv...