Endocrine Abstracts

According to incidence data from Italian cancer registers, colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in both men and women even considering skin non-melanoma cancers, lung and breast cancers. Moreover it represents the third absolute leading cause of cancer death in women and the fourth in men. Although data on Italian population regarding the role of estrogens in colorectal cancer have not yet been collected, several strands of evidence from international epidemiologi...

Tumor-induced osteomalacia (TIO) or ‘oncogenic osteomalacia’ is a rare paraneoplastic disorder, usually resulting from Fibroblast Growth Factor 23 (FGF23) oversecretion by a benign small ‘phosphaturic mesenchymal tumor’, causing hypophosphatemia and reduced 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D synthesis. Calcium and parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels are usually normal, but secondary/tertiary hyperparathyroidism has been reported in up to 5% of the cases, mainly due to 1,...

Pheochromocytoma is a rare catecholamine-secreting tumour arising from chromaffin cells in the adrenal medulla and one of the main causes of endocrine hypertension. We here report the case of a 48-year old man admitted to the Internal Medicine Department for evaluation of resistant hypertension. The patient presented with headache, sweating, palpitations, pitting edema, hypertension and hypokalemia both resistant to conventional polytherapy. He was therefore investigated for e...

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...