Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Nodular goiter is one of the commonest endocrinopathy. Its incidence increases with age accounting for more than 50% of subjects older than 60 years. Elderly subjects more frequently suffer from pressure symptoms. Loco-regional treatments, like laser photocoagulation and percutaneous ethanol injection, are a potentially useful tool to treat TNs but their efficacy is still debated. Radiofrequency thermal ablation (RTA) has been applied to several benign and malignan...

Adults with hypopituitarism are known to have reduced life expectancy with a 2-fold higher risk of death for cardiovascular disease compared with controls. In Italy, to identify individuals at high risk for cardiovascular disease, the function of the Progetto CUORE has been identified and the global cardiovascular risk score has been built using data from different Italian cohorts. To assess the global cardiovascular risk score in adult hypopituitaric patients: 108 hypopituita...

Semen quality and reproductive hormones may be affected in men with testicular neoplasia (TN) and lymphoproliferative disorders (LD). We evaluated these parameters before, 6, 12 and 24 months after the end of the oncological treatments in 60 patients with TN, and in 35 patients with LD. The patients were divided on the bases of the basal sperm concentration (A< and B≥ 10 million/ml). FSH, LH, testosterone (T) and inhibin B levels and sperm parameters were evaluated i...

Background: Hyperuricemia is often associated with chronic kidney diseases (CKD) and is considered as an independent risk factor of cardiovascular and renal diseases. Urate transporter 1 (URAT1), organic anion transporter 1 (OAT1) and OAT3 are believed to play pivotal roles on urate excretion in kidneys. Activation of RAAS in the kidney plays a key role in the pathophysiology of CKD. Thus, we hypothesized that RAAS may be involved in hyperuricemia in patients with CKD by effec...

RET is a tyrosine-kinase receptor having a GPI-linked co-receptor or GFRα. Moreover, RET has four different ligands (GDNF, NTN, ART and PSP) with its respective co-receptor (GFRα-1,-2,-3 and 4). Pituitary cells are differentiated specialized secretory cells. Sommatotrophs are responsible for growth during infancy and puberty until achievement of the final adult height. Although genetic factors leading to somatotroph hypoplasia are well known, no much is known about t...

Activation of the Ras/ERK pathway and stimulation of proliferation by integrins in thyroid cells requires CaMKII activation. To date, whether this role of CaMKII is a general mechanism or is restricted to integrin signalling is unknown. As oncogenic activation of the Ras/ERK pathway by mutated Ras, RET/PTC and Trk is frequent in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), we investigated the expression and activation level of CaMKII in PTC primary culture and in stable cell lines.<...

Objective and importance: Among pathologies associated with acromegaly, have great importance both colon benignant neoformations such polyposis, and cardiovascular complications such as miocardic hypertrophy, arterial hypertension, coronaropathy and valvulopathy.Clinical presentation: We report a case of 74-years-old woman with acromegaly, diabetes mellitus type II and hyperthyroidism, who was admitted at our clinic with symptoms of chronic febricula wit...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) and, in general, cardiac arrhythmias are among the most frequent complications during clinical thyrotoxicosis. However to-day the most frequent conditions of hyperthyroidism are subclinical and more subtle is the relationship between this last condition and cardiac arrhythmias.In order to evaluate this topic, we considered two groups: A) patients admitted into the hospital for AF; B) patients affected by subclinical hyperthyroidi...

Understanding human pancreatic beta cell differentiation provides safe, normal pathways by which to manipulate stem cells for the ambitious treatment of Type 1 diabetes (1-3). The transcription factor Neurogenin 3 (Ngn3) is a transient, yet critical regulator of this process, committing progenitor cells to an endocrine cell fate (4). However, the downstream consequences of NGN3 expression remain incompletely understood.To identify new target genes of NGN...

Bone mass, macrostructure and lean mass are being identified as main contributors of strength of upper femur. The purpose of this study has been to assess the role of the cortical and trabecular bone as well as muscle mass in the hip fracture production. We used a new DXA application which allow 3D bone volume reconstruction from standard 2D DXA scans, providing a three dimensional approach of the femoral shape and bone density spatial distribution and measurement cortical thi...