Endocrine Abstracts

Glucose metabolism alterations are frequently observed in acromegalic patients. Somatostatin analogues (SSTA) are the most widely used drugs to treat acromegaly, since they inhibit GH and IGF-1 levels, reduce pituitary mass, but can affect glucose metabolism. Aim of our study was to evaluate glucose metabolism alterations in acromegalic patients cured after surgery and in patients with active disease during treatment with SSTA. We studied 10 patients (group A, 5F, 55.66±1...

Overt hypercortisolism causes reduction in bone mass and density. The effects of subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (SCS) on bone markers and structure are still debated. We therefore studied 56 patients with adrenal incidentaloma: group A=35 (20 F 15 M, age 43–79, mean 64.6±1.5; BMI 29.9±0.9 kg/m2) without evidence of hypercortisolism, and group B=21 (10 F 11 M, age 51–76, mean 63.4±1.9, BMI 28.0±1.2 kg/m2) with SCS (i.e. w...

IntroductionTypical bronchial carcinoids (TBC) are rare well-differentiated neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN) of the lung whose management can still be very challenging. In fact, the gold-standard treatment for TBC is total resection of the primary tumour; however, in case of metastatic disease adjuvant therapy with the mTOR inhibitor everolimus (eve) might be recommended. Unfortunately, prognosis may be very poor in cases showing moderate response rates to...

Fibro-adipogenic progenitors (FAPs), a muscle-resident stem cell population, have recently emerged as important actors of muscle regeneration by interacting with myogenic progenitors (MPs) to promote the formation of new muscle fibers. However, in pathological condition, as muscle dystrophies, this coordinated response is lost and then an accumulation of FAPs is observed. In particular, in a mouse model of Duchenne muscle dystrophy (mdx), the accumulation of a specific subpopu...

Introduction: Thalassaemia syndromes are a group of inherited haemolytic disorders determining chronic anaemia, iron overload and organ damage (through the production of ROS), necessitating of iron chelation therapy. Nowadays, there is scant knowledge on hypercalciuria in thalassaemic Western patients. Therefore, aim of our study was evaluating the prevalence of hypercalciuria and identifying risk factors and clinical consequences associated with its development.<p class="...

Protein kinase C (PKC) is a family of serine-threonine kinases that regulate many cellular processes including proliferation and survival. Previous evidence has shown that PKC is involved in the control of human medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) proliferation and survival by modulating apoptosis, with a mechanism that implicates PKCβII isoform and translocation in different subcellular compartments.In this study, we investigated the role of PKC&#948...

Teriparatide is a skeletal anabolic drug that represents the first and new class of bone anabolic agents able to increase bone formation, bone mineral density and strength. Several studies demonstrated the efficacy of this drug in post-menopausal and glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis, but few data are available on the effects of the drug in long-term therapy in humans, so far.We analyzed a population of 135 women in post-menopausal age treated with ter...

GH and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) are known to promote breast carcinogenesis. Breast cancer (BC) incidence in not increased in female acromegalic patients, but mortality is greater as compared to general population. We previously demonstrated that GH/IGF1 excess influences BC response to therapy, possibly accounting for the increased mortality. We indeed showed that GH and IGF1 induce cell proliferation of a BC cell line, the MCF7 cells, providing protection towards t...

It has been demonstrated that everolimus, an mTOR inhibitor, has potent anti-proliferative effect in a human Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma (MTC) cell line, TT, and in two human MTC primary cultures. We aimed at evaluating the possible antiproliferative effects of everolimus in a group of 20 human MTC in primary culture. To this purpose, 20 MTCs were dispersed in primary cultures, treated without or with 1 nM – 1 μM everolimus, 10 nM SOM230, and/or 50 nM IGF1. Cell viab...

Mitotane therapy is associated with many side effects, including thyroid function perturbations mimicking central hypothyroidism, possibly due to laboratory test interference or pituitary direct effects of mitotane. Therefore, we aimed at investigating whether increasing concentrations of mitotane in the therapeutic range might interfere with thyroid hormone assays and evaluate the effects of mitotane on a mouse TSH- producing pituitary cell line. TSH, FT4 and FT<su...