Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Angiogenesis plays a major role in cancer growth and metastasis. Differences in angiogenesis and the balance of angiogenic growth factors and inhibitors may play a role in determining the observed variations in tumor behaviour. VEGF overexpression in adrenocortical carcinomas (AC) has been recently shown. Moreover a new steroidogenic specific tissue angiogenic factor (EG-VEGF) has been described, and its role is presently unknown in adrenal tumors. Previous evide...

Osteoprotegerin (OPG) has been identified as a decoy receptor that inhibits osteoclast differentiation and recently as a paracrine regulator of vascular calcification. OPG is suppressed by glucocorticoid administration. In this study, we evaluated OPG and bone metabolism in Cushing’s syndrome (CS) before and after surgical treatment. Twenty-nine patients with CS (26 women and 3 men, mean age: 40.7–2.8 years) and 27 age and sex-matched controls have been studied for b...

Glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor is a member of the G protein-coupled receptors family. According to its incretin properties, GIPR is expressed in tissues such as pancreas, stomach and adipose tissue. However GIPR expression pattern appears to be broader, as it was detected in other tissues such as heart, lung and the central nervous system, thus suggesting either novel ligands for GIPR or novel actions for GIP. Moreover, in some patients with food-d...

Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is associated with hypercoagulable state, mainly dependent on corticosteroid-induced increase of von Willebrand factor (VWF) levels, even though this does not affects all patients. In normals plasma VWF levels are genetically determined by ABO blood groups and polymorphisms G/C −1793, C/T −1234, A/G −1185, G/A −1050 of VWF promoter. These SNPs segregate as haplotype 1 (G/C/A/G) and haplotype 2 (C/T/G/A) with genotype 1/1 (GG...

Adrenocortical carcinoma (AC) is a rare neoplasm with poor prognosis. Medical treatment of AC is actually based on the use of op’DDD (mitotane) with or without traditional chemotherapeutic agents. Only very few information are available about the effectiveness of somatostatin analogs in AC. In human adrenal gland the expression of all five somatostatin receptor (SSTR) subtypes was previously demonstrated. A differential expression was shown in adrenal adenomas and carcino...

BackgroundNeonatal diabetes mellitus is a rare form of monogenic diabetes which is diagnosed in the first six months of life. Eight patients with neonatal diabetes presenting to a single centre were studied for clinical presentation, genetics and treatment outcomes.Objective: Eight children (2 f/6m) presenting to a single centre in Turkey were studied for correlation of disease with clinical features and genetics, suitability of current ...

Introduction: Multiple pituitary adenomas (PA) have a prevalence of 0.2-2.6% of all resected PAs. However, most of them are simultaneously diagnosed and in the setting of acromegaly. In a 2019 surgical series with 22 cases of multiple PAs, only one case was asynchronous and all of them had a positive immunohistochemical staining.Case report: A 32-year-old woman (1996) was referred to na Endocrinology appointment with amenorrhea and weight gain for the la...

Background: Literature data indicate that up to 36.8% of patients with chronic endocrinopathies, occurring in children, abandon follow-up visits in adulthood, with the risk of major long-term consequences for their health. For this reason, it is essential that their transfer to an adult physician takes place through a well-structured transition process in order to ensure continuity of care. With this goal, the Transition Clinic of pediatric endocrine pathologies of AOUI Verona...

Objective: Primary aldosteronism (PA) is the most frequent cause of secondary hypertension. According to the Endocrine Society Guidelines, up to 50% of hypertensive patients should be screened for PA, using the aldosterone to renin (or plasma renin activity (PRA)) ratio (AARR and ARR respectively). The automated Diasorin LIAISON chemiluminescent immunoassay for renin and aldosterone measurement became available and in many laboratories is currently used instead of the classica...

In patients with primary aldosteronism (PA), adrenal vein sampling (AVS) is considered the gold standard to distinguish between unilateral and bilateral autonomous production of aldosterone, while diagnostic imaging tests by CT scan or MRI are often inconclusive for the diagnosis. To date agreement is lacking on the best criteria indicating successful cannulation and lateralization.The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of different diagnostic c...