Endocrine Abstracts

Acromegaly is due to increased GH secretion usually sustained by a GH-secreting pituitary adenoma. Somatostatin analogues (SSA) can control GH hypersecretion in 60% of patients and tumor volume in 30%. The disease control is, in turn, associated with lower mortality and therefore to verify the optimal control of the disease activity is of critical importance to adapt the dose and the choice of alternative treatment. The criteria for optimized disease control had been assumed a...

Hyperandrogenic disorders cause psychological implication in young girls, limiting the quality of life. Salivary cortisol (SalF) testing was proved to be useful in the evaluations of acute stress responses. Aim of this study was to investigate SalF responses to a stressor event in late adolescent females. We selected 165 drug-free females aged 16–19 years from a cross-sectional epidemiological study. Saliva was collected in the morning before and after a stressor event co...

Radiotherapy (RT) may represent a useful tool in the treatment of GH-secreting tumours in the presence of a post-operative active disease and single dose stereotactic RT/gamma knife is the preferred option in most cases. The effects of RT on the control of hormone secretion are very slow and pharmacological treatment remains necessary for years. Some authors advocate withdrawal of somatostatin analogues (SSA) during RT, although the short-term effects of RT on hormone secretio...

Hypothyroidism and autoimmune thyroiditis are common in patients with Down’ syndrome (DS), leading to common prescription of thyroid replacement therapy. On the other hand, thyroid function is involved in oxidative stress (OS) mechanisms. DS is a well-known high OS condition because several genes involved in OS mechanisms map on chromosome 21 and coenzyme Q10, lipophilic antioxidant, could be more correlated with hypothyroidism than TSH in DS people. To investigate relati...

Adrenocortical cancer (ACC) is still orphan of medical treatment. Our preliminary data show that EGF induces ACC cell lines proliferation (+20 and +10% vs control in SW13 and NCI-H295 cell lines respectively). EGF receptor (EGFR) expression is higher and ubiquitous in SW13 cells, while it is weaker in NCI-H295 cells, where it is present only on the membrane. Aim of our study is to analyze EGFR downstream signalling in ACC cell lines.EGF induces VEGF synt...

Introduction: The relationship between food intake and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis has been studied in the development of visceral adiposity and obesity. The HPA axis may interact with the reward system, thus influencing food choices. On the other hand, it has been shown that macronutrients differently modulate the HPA axis activity.The aim of this study was to evaluate the dietary habits in subjects with adrenal masses (adenoma o...

Introduction: CDKN1B gene, which encodes a cyclin-dependent kinase (Cdk) inhibitor, regulates the progression throughout G1 to S cell cycle progression. CDKN1B loss-of-function germinal mutations cause the multiple endocrine neoplasia type 4 syndrome (MEN4).Objective: The aim of the study is the functional characterization of a new 4 bp deletion in CDKN1B 5′-UTR region, identified in an acromegalic patient.Materials and metho...

Increased serum TSH has been reported in obese children and adolescents and is considered an adaptive mechanism secondary to obesity. This study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that this adaptation is not associated with obesity per se but with its related metabolic alterations. Using a cross-sectional approach, we collected retrospectively fasting serum TSH concentration (if within the normal range), anthropometric parameters and criteria for the diagnosis of t...

Introduction: Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) is the most frequent endocrine cancer. After surgery followed, if any, by 131I radio remnant ablation (RRA), follow-up monitoring consists of neck ultrasonography (US) and measurements of thyroglobulin (Tg) levels and anti-Tg antibodies (Ac-Tg) both on levothyroxine (L-T4) therapy and after recombinant TSH (rTSH). The aim of our study is to define a cut-off of Tg before RRA (RRA-Tg) during <...

Introduction: Recent studies showed that morphometric vertebral fractures (VF) are an early and frequent complication in patients (pts) withhyperfunctioning pituitary adenomas and hypopituitarism (independently from the etiology). GH excess or severe deficiency play a negative key role on bone health in this clinical setting. Disease control or adequate replacement therapies still remain a cornerstone for the clinician to reduce the burden of osteo-metabolic complications. To ...