Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Pheochromocytoma is a rare catecholamine-secreting tumor that arises from the chromaffin tissue of the adrenal medulla. Of the reported cases, only 10% consist in bilateral lesions and the probability of multiple endocrine neoplasia should always be investigated.Clinical case: Female patient, 19 years old, presented with a clinical history with 2 years of evolution, characterized by episodes of palpitations, headache, nausea and abdominal d...

Background: We have previously demonstrated that the natriuretic peptides BNP and NT-proBNP rise with ascent to high altitude (HA). Both peptides are classically markers of congestive cardiac failure but have also recently been found to be associated with pulmonary hypertension at sea-level (SL). As pulmonary hypertension is central to the risk of high altitude pulmonary oedema we aimed to establish if there was any association between high pulmonary artery systolic pressure (...

The long-term risk of carcinogenic and genetic damage following the treatment with 131I for differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) is quite low. The hypothyroid status (HS), at the time of 131I administration, decreases the renal clearance of 131I and increases the whole-body, blood and bone marrow irradiation, unlike the euthyroid status (ES). Chromosome aberrations (CA) in peripheral lymphocytes reflect blood cells exposure to irradiation. This ...

Introduction: Intra thyroidal parathyroid adenoma is an uncommon presentation of primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT). Herein we report such a patient who had recurrent hypercalcemia after a classical parathyroid exploration.Case presentation: 45 year old female, home-maker had a long standing history of weakness, back and lower limb pain, loss of appetite. Preliminary evaluation at secondary care level revealed hypercalcemia (18.3 mg/dl) with high intact ...

Introduction: It has been reported that vitamin D deficiency is common in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (pHPT), and this could affect the clinical expression of the disease. However only few studies addressed this issue and refer to American or North European patients. In these studies, only about one third of the patients showed a vitamin D replete state.Subjects and methods: In 207 consecutive pHPT patients (M/F=45/162, age (mean ±<sma...

We previously demonstrated that acromegalic patients with normal IGF-I levels after surgery also met the current criteria for cure (i.e. postglucose GH nadir <1 μg/l) after long term monitoring. Since some Authors recently proposed to even lower the present GH nadir cut off value, the aim of this study was to confirm its adequacy to define long lasting disease remission. A group of 24 acromegalic patients (9 M&15 F, age 54.2±9.6 yrs) normal IGF-I levels and p...

Efflux transporters in the blood–testis barrier (BTB) prevent entry and accumulation of xenobiotics in testis but are also involved in local transport of steroid hormones. Among these are the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters, P-glycoprotein (P-gp/ABCB1) and multidrug resistance proteins 1 (MRP1/ABCC1) and 4 (MRP4/ABCC4). Here, we studied the interaction of suggested endocrine disruptors (EDCs) bisphenol A (BPA), tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA), bis(...

We present a 57-year-old female with Cushing’s syndrome characterised by new type 2 diabetes, hypertension, weight gain, bruising, proximal myopathy and depression. She also had poorly-healing cellulitic ulcers on both legs. Investigations: hypokalaemia and ACTH-dependent Cushing’s syndrome. Low dose dexamethasone suppression test: T=0 ACTH 85 ng/l, cortisol 907 nmol/l, T=48 h cortisol 807. High dose dexamethasone suppression test failed to suppr...

The blood-brain barrier for peptide hormones is protective for the maternal brain.OBJECTIVE: To compare peptide hormone levels on the two sides of the blood cerebrospinal fluid barrier in pregnant, non pregnant and menopausal women.METHODS: We investigated, with the approval of the local ethics committee, 35 healthy pregnant women at term, aged 21-41 years (group G), 27 non-pregnant women aged 21-43 years (group C) and 15 menopausa...

Up to now there are few studies about differential proteomics in thyroid. Our group has developed a method for standard human primary thyroid culture maintaining the phenotype through passages. Thus, we believe of great interest the search for biomarkers in these cultures by 2D-PAGE coupled to MALDI-TOF/TOF-MS.Aims: i) To standardize the conditions for sample extraction and controls. ii) To compare and identify the differential proteomic pattern between ...