Endocrine Abstracts

Glucocorticoids are known to exert a stimulatory action on white blood cell precursor proliferation but little is known on erythrocyte counts in patients with Cushing’s syndrome.Aim: Of the present study was to assess red and white blood cell parametres in a large series of patients with Cushing’s syndrome and follow the blood cell changes after postsurgical remission or persistence of hypercortisolism.Methods: Of 84 pati...

Background: Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHP) is associated with increased rates of cardiovascular (CV) risk. Moreover, it is not fully clear whether surgery can attenuate CV risk. The intima-media thickness (IMT) of carotid vessels is considered a marker of atherosclerosis and CV events.Aim: Of the study was to evaluate IMT and some metabolic parameters in PHP patients.Subjects: Of 56 subjects were studied. Patients were divided i...

Background: QT interval reflects cardiac ventricular repolarization and, if prolonged, increases the risk of malignant arrhythmias such as torsade de pointes. QT interval duration is similar in boys and girls during childhood but shortens in males after puberty. In fact, reference limits for QTc in adults reflect this difference, i.e. lower than 460 ms in women and lower than 440 ms in men. Experimental studies suggest that testosterone is the major contributor to shortening o...

PreproTRH (178–199), a 22-aminoacid cleavage product of the TRH prohormone, has been postulated to act as an ACTH-releasing inhibitor. Indeed, in vitro evidence indicates that this peptide may inhibit basal and stimulated ACTH secretion in rodent anterior pituitary primary cultures and cell lines (Redei 1995, Revskoy 2001), although not all studies concur (Nicholson 1996). Aim of the present study was to test the effect of preproTRH(178–199) in human tumoral c...

Some extra-thyroid effects of TSH have been described in vitro and in vivo. TSH has recently been suggested to induce IL-6 secretion from adipocytes. Leptin is the main secretory protein from adipose tissue. Our aim was to evaluate the acute effect of rhTSH-induced TSH surge on serum leptin levels in differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) patients. Ten patients (2 m, 8 f; age range 31–66 years) with stage 1-3 DTC were evaluated during scheduled standard rhTS...

Background and aims: There is evidence that new anti-diabetic drugs may limit liver disease progression, reduce liver fat and normalize serum aminotranferase levels in patients with NAFLD. We compared the effectiveness of new drug classes on liver fat in T2DM patients by means of surrogate markers.Materials and methods: In an observational retrospective study we analysed the 12-month time-courses of clinical and anthropometric data of T2DM cases treated ...

Silibinin, a milk thistle extract with known hepatoprotective effects, has recently been shown to act upon tumoral corticotropes and revert the Cushingoid phenotype in an allograft mouse model (Riebold et al. 2015). Silbinin is known to inhibit HSP90 -a chaperone to the glucocorticoid receptor-thereby restoring sensitivity to glucocorticoid negative feedback in tumoral corticotropes. Aim of the present study was to assess the effect of silibinin on ACTH synthesis and ...

The aim of the present study was to measure free thiols content, Na+/K+-ATPase, Ca2+-ATPase activities in human spermatozoa of asthenozoospermic patients and normospermic donors, and evaluate any influence on kinetic sperm features, as well as correlation with peroxynitrite. In fact, membrane integrity and its composition are the basic characteristics of the sperm membrane, thus, it is evident that its composition is an important factor for mem...

Retinoic acid, a major modulator of adrenal development and differentiation, has also been shown to inhibit ACTH secretion by tumoral corticotropes. Recent clinical trials in patients with Cushing’s disease revealed that retinoic acid exerts beneficial effects in these patients (1, 2). Of note, the decrease in cortisol secretion during retinoic acid administration was more pronounced than the change in ACTH levels (1) suggesting a direct action at adrenal level. Aim of th...

The potential therapeutic applications of targeting brown adipose tissue open new clinical avenues in fighting against metabolic pathologies. However, due to the limited brown depots in adult humans, dramatically reduced after birth, solid cell models to study human brown adipogenesis and its pathophysiological regulation are urgently needed.In our study, we characterized a novel human model of brown adipose stem cells, hfB-ASC, derived from fetal inters...