Endocrine Abstracts

Understanding how pancreatic beta-cells develop during human development is essential to advance current protocols aimed at developing insulin-producing beta-cells in vitro and highlight therapeutic targets for diabetes treatment. Identifying the single-gene mutations which result in individuals developing diabetes in the first 6 months of life (a condition called neonatal diabetes) has the potential to give unique insights into the genes regulating human beta-cells w...

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is frequently associated with vascular complications including diabetic microangiopathy. Nailfold capillaroscopy is a useful non-invasive diagnostic tool to identify changes in the microvascular architecture. Published literature hints at the presence of nailfold circulatory morphologic changes in diabetic patients.Objective: The purpose of the study was to identify by nailfold capillaroscopy microvascular changes in ...

Introduction: Only one case of hypophysitis secondary to Takayasu’s artheritis (TKA) has been described so far. We report the second case of a TKA presenting with a massive sellar and cerebrovascular infiltration.Clinical case: A 52 years-old female was referred to endocrine outpatient clinics after a brain MRI performed for a 2-year history of headaches, dizziness and general discomfort. Past medical history included hypertension and aspecific symp...

Background: Impaired insulin and glucose levels are implicated in the etiology of cardiovascular disease, however, their influence on the formation and composition of atherosclerotic plaque remains unclear.Purpose: To investigate the association between fasting serum insulin and glucose levels with atherosclerotic plaque composition in the carotid artery.Methods: In 1740 participants (mean age 72.9 years, 46% women, 14.4% diabetes ...

Introduction: Adrenocortical tumors (ACT) are common diseases mostly benign, but among them, adrenocortical carcinomas (ACC) appear highly aggressive with metastatic potential. Wnt/β-catenin pathway is frequently switched on in ACT, with β-catenin greatly dephosphorylated and consequently activated. While IWR1 induces an increase in Axin2 protein levels, XAV939 inhibits tankyrase 1 and 2 (thus stabilizing Axin): both stimulate β-catenin phosphorylation and degra...

Background: Adrenocortical tumors (ACT) are classified as adenomas (ACA) or carcinomas (ACC). β-Catenin constitutive activation is a frequent alteration in benign and malignant ACT. E-cadherin was discovered as a protein associated with β-catenin which plays a crucial role in cadherin-mediated cell adhesion. N-cadherin seems to be involved in the development of malignant ACT, but information regarding expression of N-cadherin or E-cadherin in ACT is very limited....

Prokineticins (Prok1 and Prok2) are chemokine-like peptides, which regulate through two G-protein-coupled receptors, ProkR1 and ProkR2, different physiological and pathological functions. Prok1 plays a significant role in tumour development and progression in several tissues. There are few data on the involvement of Prok1 and ProkR1 in testicular cancer. Aim of this study was to evaluate the expression of Prok1 and ProkR1 in a series of testicular germ cell tumours (GCT).<...

Context: The effect of GH replacement in elderly GH deficient (GHD) adults on bone mineral density (BMD) is not known.Objective: In this prospective, single-centre, open-label study, the effects of 3-year GH replacement were determined in 45 GHD adults above 65 years of age and in 45 younger GHD patients with a mean age of 39.5 (S.E.M. 1.1) years. All patients had adult onset disease and both groups were comparable in terms of number of an...

PATZ1 is a recently discovered zinc finger protein that, due to the presence of the POZ domain, acts as a transcriptional repressor affecting the basal activity of different promoters, and associates with a variety of transcription factors (i.e. RNF4, HMGA1, gscl, SPBP). We have previously described, by using mice lacking the PATZ1 gene, its crucial role in spermatogenesis. Consistently, PATZ1-KO mice are unfertile and testes from these mice showed only few spermatocyte...

Introduction: Somatostatin (SST) is a widely distributed polypeptide that modulates the endocrine and exocrine secretion, cellular proliferation and differentiation, and apoptosis via G protein-linked receptors. Our previous studies showed high SSTR expression in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), aldosterone producing adenoma (APA) and in cortisol producing adenoma (CPA). Only very few information are available about the effectiveness of SST analogs in adrenal tumors.<p clas...