Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Acromegaly is a chronic disease which causes multiple impairments that negatively affect daily life. Telemedicine is proving to be useful in diagnosing and treating these disabling aspects, including psycho-physical comorbidities, which are difficult to investigate during conventional visits.Aim of the study: To improve the management of acromegaly, both in cured and active disease, through the use of telemedicine technologies in addition to ...

Background: Adrenal involvement in multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN1) has been reported, its prevalence varying from 9 to 73%. The aim of this study was to characterize the adrenal phenotype and the prevalence and clinical significance of cortisol hypersecretion in a cohort of MEN1 patients.Methods: We retrospectively analyzed data of 36 adult patients with germline menin mutation (20 females; mean age 50±17.4 years) in regular follow-up at ou...

Introduction: Endogenous hypercortisolism is associated with cardio-metabolic complications and promotes the deposition of lipids in different tissues, particularly in the liver. However, the prevalence of hepatic steatosis in patients with Cushing’s syndrome (CS) has been little investigated so far and only one previous study reported a prevalence of 20% using computed tomography. The aim of the study is to evaluate the prevalence of hepatic steatosis and the organ-speci...

Background: Differential diagnosis of ACTH-dependent hypercortisolism is crucial to indicate a proper treatment and is based on CRH-, high-dose dexamethasone suppression-test (HDDST) and pituitary MRI. However, up to 50% of cases of Cushing’s disease (CD) present a negative MRI or a visible lesion < 6 mm. In these patients, guidelines suggest to perform bilateral inferior petrosal sinus sampling (BIPSS) in order to establish a correct diagnosis. Aim of this study was ...

Objective: The diagnosis of central hypoadrenalism (HPAI) is a major clinical challenge. The gold standard procedure remains insuline tolerance test (ITT). Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is considered the best procedure for the evaluation of cortisol levels. This study aimed to evaluate cut-offs of serum (TM-SeC) and salivary cortisol (SaC) by LC-MS/MS and serum cortisol by ECLIA assay (E-SeC) after Standard dose ACTH test (SDCT) in diagnosing HPAI.<...

Introduction: Acromegaly is characterised by chronic exposure to high GH and IGF1 levels that leads to increased bone turnover. Regardless of BMD value, acromegalic patients seem to have an increased vertebral fracture risk probably due to a reduction of bone quality. Trabecular bone score (TBS) is a new index used for assessing bone microarchitecture. In this study TBS was used for the first time to analyze bone quality in acromegaly.Methods: 16 new acr...

Introduction: The optimal treatment duration for prolactinomas to minimize reccurences is not clear. 2011 Endocrine Society Guidelines suggested that cabergoline withdrawal may be safely undertaken after 2 years in patients achieving normoprolactinemia and tumor volume reduction.Materials and methods: We analyzed 74 patients (mean age=46.9±14.4, M/F=19/56, macro/micro=18/56) bearing a prolactinoma. Patients were divided in 3 groups: Group A (23) tre...

Klinefelter syndrome (KS) is a frequent form of male hypogonadism that may be associated with a series of comorbidities potentially affecting quality of life and survival. As a matter of fact, KS was shown to negatively impact skeletal health. However, the studies so far published on this topic were mainly focused on evaluation ofbone mineral density (BMD) and bone microstructure, whereas data on fracture risk are still lacking. In this cross-sectional study, we evaluated for ...

Chronic exposure to GH hypersecretion may alter the physiological balance of the spine through inducing degeneration of intervertebral discs and impaired trophism of facet joints. Moreover, GH in excess may also cause profound deterioration in bone microstructure with consequent increase in risk of fragility vertebral fractures (VFs). In this cross-sectional study,we evaluated for the first time in acromegaly the association between spine imbalance and VFs. Thirty-eight patien...

Background: Pituitary tumors are mostly sporadic, but in less than 5% of cases they can be associated to genetic syndromes, so harbouring germline mutations. Familial pituitary tumors are often more aggressive, so it’s important to detect them, for both a better early diagnosis and genetic counselling. Before the development of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), Sanger sequencing was the most widely used method of DNA sequencing. Therefore, DNA samples were analysed follo...