Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: To assess clinical features, diagnosis, treatment and outcome in patients with pheochromocytoma surgically treated in the past 3 decades in two tertiary referral hospitals.Methods: A retrospective study on clinical and pathological characteristics, treatment, and outcome in patients with pheochromocytoma followed up in specialized neuroendocrinology units who underwent surgery in the period 1981–2016 was performed.R...

Introduction: Glucocorticoid replacement for adrenal insufficiency (AI) remains inadequate, resulting in high morbidity, premature mortality and quality-of-life (QoL) impairment. This study investigated the long-term safety of dual-release hydrocortisone (DR-HC) in patients with primary AI.Methods: AI patients who completed a randomized, 3-month crossover study of once-daily DR-HC versus thrice-daily conventional immediate-release hydrocortisone plus a 6...

Background: Adrenal incidentalomas are found in 3–7% of radiological series and many of them are adrenal adenomas. Autonomous cortisol secretion without clinical signs of overt hypercortisolism is a common finding in these patients. Studies reported metabolic derangement and increased cardiovascular risk associated with this state of subtle cortisol excess, however scanty data are available on the natural history of this condition.Aim: To assess the...

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a severe eating disorder characterized by significantly low body weight and fear of gaining weight. Amenorrhea is a very frequent feature in AN and it could persist after normalization of BMI. A well-represented fat mass and an adequate body composition (BC) are necessary for resumption of periods. Patients affected by AN, although in the remission phase, fear of becoming fat and refuse to gain weight. In our study we evaluated the effect of a normocal...

Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms and cognitive dysfunction are common in Cushing´s disease (CD), and seem only partly reversible after biochemical remission has been achieved.Aim: To investigate prescription of drugs associated with neuropsychiatric morbidity in a large national cohort of CD patients.Methods: Patients in the Swedish Pituitary Registry, diagnosed with CD between July 2006 and January 2018 were included, <e...

The effects of glucocorticoids are mediated by the glucocorticoid receptors (GR) and some single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been associated to enhanced sensitivity (N363S, BclI) or reduced sensitivity (ER22/23EK) to glucocorticoids.Aim of the present study was: 1) to assess the frequency of N363S, BclI and ER22/23EK in 46 patients with Cushing’s syndrome (CS) and 73 patients with adrenal incidentaloma (AI) compared to 186 healthy subjects;...

The coexistence of pheochromocytoma and hyperreninemia secondary to renal artery stenosis, which both represent important causes of juvenile hypertension, has been reported in Literature, while association between pheochromocytoma and reninoma has never been described.We evaluated a 24-year-old boy, which came to our attention for severe hypertension, unresponsive to anti-hypertensive polytherapy. In 1996, because of elevated calcitonin levels (180 pg/ml...

Hirsutism affects 5–10% of women of reproductive age and may be the initial sign of an androgen disorder. We describe two cases of occult Sertoli-Leydig ovarian cell tumor suspected only on the basis of clinical and laboratory features.The first patient, a 42 year-old woman came to our attention for hirsutism. Several blood samples showed a very high testosterone concentration (~4 ng/ml), while non-ovarian causes of hyperandrogenism were excluded. A...

Idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (IHH) is a rare and heterogeneous disease due to defects of GnRH secretion or action. IHH could be associated or not with anosmia respectively identifying the Kallmann’s syndrome (KS) or the normosmic IHH (nIHH). So far numerous causative genetic defects have been described, but very recent molecular genetic studies and animal models have opened novel perspectives. We are studying a series of 16 KS (14M,2F) and 18 nIHH (14M,4F). Al...

Aim: We compared effectiveness of partial withdrawal of levothyroxine (L-T4) to the use of recombinant human TSH (rhTSH) in preparation for Tg testing. We also evaluated clinical aspects and quality-of-life (QOL) during both regimens.Materials and methods: Ten consecutive patients, previously treated with total thyroidectomy and radioiodine ablation for DTC, underwent rhTSH protocol and, after 15 days, reduced their L-T4 dose by 50% for 5 weeks. At the f...