Endocrine Abstracts

Background: There is significant interest in how the use of different treatment regimens (e.g. surgery, medical therapy) impacts the clinical course of Acromegaly. This study has been designed to better understand clinical decision making in the context of various treatment options.Methods: OASIS is an international, observational study in recently diagnosed acromegalic patients. Ethical committee approval was obtained where applicable. Observations incl...

Chronic exposure to hypercortisolism has a significant impact on patient’s health and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL), as demonstrated with generic questionnaires. Objective: Develop and validate a disease-generated questionnaire to evaluate HRQoL in patients with Cushing’s syndrome-CS- (Cushing QoL). Methods: After a literature review, interviews with expert endocrinologists and 10 patients identified HRQoL domains and clinical aspects of the disease; an anal...

Respiratory disorders are a major cause of illness and impaired physical function in patients with acromegaly, contributing to 25% of all recorded deaths, with respiratory mortality 3-fold higher than in normal subjects. Sleep apnoea (SA), the phenomenon of recurrent cessation or decrease of airflow to the lungs during sleep, is the commonest reported respiratory complication. Both obstructive (OSA) and central (CSA) sleep apnoeas are known to occur, although the overall preva...

Introduction: Disruption of the hypothalamic/pituitary axes may lead to hypopituitarism. Anterior pituitary deficiencies (APD) and arginine-vasopressin deficiency (AVP-D) are well established and are treated with hormone replacement. Over the last decade, preliminary studies support the presence of an oxytocin (OXT)-deficient state that might be clinically relevant in patients with hypopituitarism and hypothalamic damage (HHD). Therefore, identifying a provocative test to diag...

Context: There is no data on mortality of acromegaly diagnosed in the elderly. Objective: To compare clinical characteristics, GH-related comorbidities, therapeutic approaches and mortality of patients diagnosed before or after 2010 and to assess overall mortality compared with the general Spanish population. Setting: Spanish tertiary care centers.Design, Patients, and Methods: Retrospective evaluation of 118...

Background: Steroid synthesis inhibitors, like metyrapone, osilodrostat, and ketoconazole are used as second-line treatment in all types of endogenous Cushing’s syndrome (CS). However, a direct comparison of these three drugs is missing. This study aimed to compare these drugs in the short-term therapy of CS.Design: Retrospective multicenter study involving 15 European centers.Methods: Patients with CS treated with metyrapone,...

Introduction and rationale: Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is a rare disease with hypercortisolism caused either by ACTH excess from a pituitary or non-pituitary tumor or by an ACTH-independent primary adrenal overproduction of cortisol. It is associated with significant comorbidities potentially lethal: hypertension, diabetes, coagulopathy, cardiovascular disease, infections, and osteoporotic fractures. It is usually managed by surgery and/or medical treatment with steroidogene...

Chimeric somatostatin (SST)/dopamine (DA) compounds, termed dopastatins, such as BIM-23A760, an agonist for SST (sst2 and ss5) and DA (D2) receptors, are emerging as promising new approaches to treat pituitary adenomas. However, their actions and mechanisms on the different types of pituitary tumours are still incompletely understood. Thus, the aim of this study was to analyse a set of key functional parameters (signaling pathways, hormonal expression and secretion, cell viabi...

Introduction: Endogenous Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is a rare, infradiagnosed and severe disease that carries high morbidity and mortality. Delays in treatment initiation reduce reversibility of symptoms and increase mortality rate. Current gold standard for screening, 24 h urinary free cortisol, has a low reproducibility and specificity, and sampling is complicated. Midnight salivary cortisol (MSVC) determination is considered an easy and cheap test. We intend to assess its...

Pituitary adenomas are heterogeneous, rare tumors, which hinders analysis of large numbers of cases with common approaches. To overcome this, a multicenter, clinical-basic strategy was proposed aimed at enhancing the tools to diagnose and manage pituitary tumors by combining clinical/pathological/molecular information. This initiative was developed by the Sociedad Andaluza de Endocrinología y Nutrición, and further endorsed by the Sociedad Española de Endocrinol...