Endocrine Abstracts

SARS-CoV-2 has rapidly spread from China throughout the world leading to a pandemic. COVID-19 can be severe enough to cause hospitalization and death. Many patients with endocrine disorders share many of the recognized risk factors for severe disease and have potential additional risks due to corticosteroid replacement therapy or alteration in blood electrolytes. We here report three cases of COVID-19 in patients with post-surgical hypopituitarism and documented hypocortisolem...

The relationship between papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) and autoimmune thyroiditis remains controversial. To gain mechanistic insights, we developed a mouse model by combining three strains: BRAFv600E knock-in and TPO-CRE-ER transgenic to induce PTC upon tamoxifen injection, and NOD.H2h4 congenic to induce thyroiditis upon iodine administration.A total of 113 mice of the desired genotype (BRAF mutant homozygous, CRE transgenic hemiz...

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is a primarily respiratory infection which can lead to severe syndrome needing hospitalization and assisted ventilation with high lethality. In a recent meta-analysis of 33 RCTs increased risk of severe infections on treatment with Denosumab, widely used for treatment of osteoporosis, was found specifically for ear, nose, and throat. In fact, by inhibiting the receptor activator of nuclear factor κ-Β ligand, denosumab acts as an i...

Background: Subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (SCS) is defined as alterations in hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis without classic signs or symptoms of glucocorticoid excess. This condition has been associated to increased risk of adverse metabolic and cardiovascular outcomes, independently of other potential risk factors. However, is still not known if this condition could lead to a higher mortality respect to non-secreting adrenal masses (NSA).<p class="abs...

To determine a correlation between Vitamin D, GH, IGF1 and cardiovascular risk we enrolled. 41 GHD patients (22 M, 19 F, age 18–84 years) and 41 controls. In all we determined: anthropometric parameters, blood pressure (BP), lipid and glucose profile, PTH, 25-OH-vitamin D, GH peak after GHRH+ARG, IGF1. Metabolic syndrome (MS) was evaluated by the IDF criteria.The vitamin D were lower in patients than in controls (21.3±12.3 vs 28.2±9.4, <em...

3-Iodothyronamine (T1AM) is a recently discovered compound which can be regarded as a novel hormone, since it is an endogenous relative of thyroid hormone with systemic distribution, which does not interact with thyroid hormone receptors, but rather with specific G protein-coupled receptors. T1AM has been reported to modulate energy metabolism, and in rodents chronic T1AM treatment has been associated with lipolysis and decreased body weight. T...

The aim of this epidemiologic study, performed in a wide population of high-school students in Northern Italy, was to obtain an unbiased estimate of the prevalence of hyperandrogenic states in adolescents and young females.2052 female students, aged 15–19 years, were consecutively contacted. 939/2052 (45.8%) refused to participate in the study, but 431 of the 939 non-participants (45.9%) agreed to fill out a brief questionnaire aimed to broadly asse...

Unsuspected adrenal masses, or incidentalomas, are increasingly found with the widespread use of thoracic and abdominal imaging. These masses may be hormonally active or nonfunctional and benign or malignant. Clinicians must determine the nature of the mass to decide what treatment, if any, is needed.In our 17 year experience, we observed 232 patients (158 females, 74 males aged 22-91, mean age 69) affected with monolateral incidentaloma. 58 of them (25%...

Introduction: Testicular cancer (TC) is the most common cancer in white males aged 20–40 years, with a worldwide incidence of 7.5/100.000. Recently, we demonstrated an association between testiculopathy and alteration of the bone status, despite conserved bone-sparing effects of androgens and estrogens. Furthermore, recent published data from our group documented a strong reduction in 25(OH)D plasma levels in bilaterally orchiectomized patients compensated by testosterone...

Introduction: In addition to its well known effects on calcium homeostasis and bone metabolism, growing evidences shows that vitamin D plays an important role in regulation of cancer angiogenesis, cell apoptosis, differentiation, and proliferation. Vitamin D acts through vitamin D receptor (VDR), an intracellular nuclear receptor. It was found an association between different cancer histotypes and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of VDR. Despite the close relationship be...