Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Intrauterine growth is a biological process regulated by maternal, placental, and foetal endocrine signals. Birth weight is an indicator of the health of the newborn. Alterations in foetal growth lead to perinatal health risks and favour metabolic diseases during adult life. Therefore, the study of endocrine factors determining birth weight, such as ghrelin is an important issue. Ghrelin may exist as two molecular forms, desacyl ghrelin (DAG) and acyl ghrelin (AG...

Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is one of the most lethal endocrine malignancy, with a mean survival of about 6 months. Until now, the most effective therapy for ATC comprises a multimodal treatment protocol, including surgery, chemotherapy (doxorubicin and cisplatin), and hyperfractionated accelerated external beam radiotherapy, with a median patient survival of 10 months. A possible increase in the effectiveness of the treatment could be achieved testing the sensitivity of &...

Introduction: Nowadays, use of chemotherapy in well-differentiated non medullary thyroid cancer, locally advanced stage and/or with radioiodine-refractory metastases is considered of scanty value. However, in the last 40 years was not published any phase III study nor a systematic review of its use in clinical setting.Methods: A systematic literature search was performed in databases such as Medline and Embase, among others. Two independent reviewers ana...

Introduction: Patients with autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) exhibit aberrant immune-regulatory mechanisms. Galectins (Gal) are a family of glycan-binding proteins, which have been involved in immune regulation. However, the association of Gal with AITD remains unknown. In this study, we evaluated serum Gal-1 and Gal-9 in patients with AITD.Methods: Peripheral blood samples from 31 patients with Graves’ disease (GD) (14 with untreated hyperthyroidi...

The 2013 guideline (NHLBI ATP IV) on the treatment of blood cholesterol in adults was recently published. It focuses on identification of 4 Statin Benefit Groups (4SBG), in which the potential for Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD) risk reduction benefit clearly exceeds the potential for adverse effects.Objective: To estimate the prevalence of 4SBG among Venezuelan women and to determine its association with hypertension, BMI, waist circumfer...

With preterm regression of the hyaloid vascular system, the human vitreous becomes devoid of blood vessels and maintains an avascular, transparent state throughout life. However, diseases of the developing and mature retina, such as retinopathy of prematurity or proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), often result in the invasion of blood vessels into the vitreous, with a risk of causing vitreous hemorrhage, retinal detachment and, consequently, loss of vision or blindness. ...

Introduction: Everolimus is a drug selective inhibitor of mTOR. In 2012 a Phase 2 study* of everolimus monotherapy demonstrated modest efficacy in patients with pheochromocytomas/paragangliomas. Our objective was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of everolimus in a patient with paraganglioma. (*Phase 2 study of everolimus monotherapy in patient with nonfunctioning neuroendocrine tumor or pheochromocytomas/paraglangliomas. Do-Young Oh et al. Cancer 2012 <str...

Isolated acquired hypoaldosteronism (HA) is considered to be a cause of hypovolemic hyponatremia (HH) with urinary sodium loss (UNaL) and hyperkalemia/upper-limit serum potassium (SK). However, some authors question the presentation of hyponatremia of these characteristics in the absence of Addison’s disease (AD).We present a series of patients with HA. Methods: Aretrospective study of 70 cases of HH with UNaL (UNa > 25 mmol/l) and SK ≥ 5 mmol/l or in...

Introduction: In vitro monolayer cell cultures are not able to faithfully model the biological features of the three dimensional (3D) structure of solid tumours. There are limited information about the applicability of 3D cell culturing methods for modeling of tumours of endocrine organs.Aim: The aim of our work was the establishment and characterization of three-dimensional in vitro models of various endocrine tumour cells in order to ...

Introduction: Hyperaldosteronism can induce elevated parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels, presumably by increasing calciuria. Furthermore, PTH stimulates aldosterone secretion in vitro, and increases angiotensin–II-stimulated aldosterone release. In a patient with hyperaldosteronism and hyperparathyroidism, PTH receptors were detected in aldosteronoma tissue. We present three patients sent to an endocrinologist for treatment/follow-up of primary hyperparathyroidism,...