Endocrine Abstracts

Aim: To evaluate the clinical efficacy of androgen replacement therapy with oral or intramuscular (i.m.) testosterone undecanoate (T.U.) in male patients with central hypogonadism.Patients and methods: We retrospectively evaluated 40 patients with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism: 29 with pituitary tumors or craniopharyn-giomas, 11 with non-tumoral hypogonadism (median age 47 years, range 20–62), before and after androgen replacement therapy, with the ...

Background: Thermoregulatory disorders after neurosurgery of craniopharingyomas were seldom reported.Aim: To present the difficulties of etiologic diagnosis and treatment of a persistent febrile syndrome in a patient with surgically removed craniopharyngioma.Patient and methods: A 34 years old man with a giant craniopharyngioma situated in the basal-anterior part of the third ventricle is reported. Anterior pituitary hormones were ...

Some patients with pituitary adenomas show high CSF levels and/or high CSF/serum ratio for peptidic pituitary hormones (PR), potentially due to a blood-brain barrier (BBB) damage. We evaluated albumin.CSF/serum ratio (AR) in patients with pituitary adenomas and elevated PR, as an accurate index for a BBB damage.Patients and methods: We evaluated 10 controls (21–79 years, 6M /4 F) before undergoing abdominal or peripheral surgery and 52 patients with...

Background: Atrial fibrillation occurs in 5–15% of hyperthyroid patients. On the other hand, amiodarone is a highly effective antiarrhythmic agent. Despite antiarrhythmic treatment, iodine-induced hyperthyroidism via amiodarone may be associated with recurrence of initial arrhythmias.Aims: To assess if amiodarone maintained it’s antiarrhythmic efficacy in the presence of amiodarone-induced hyperthyroidism (AIT).Patients a...

It has been generally believed that clinically functioning pituitary adenomas are highly specialized neoplastic lesions, which produce a unique hormone. Increasing body of evidence argue against this concept, since about half of prolactinomas (PRM) and approximately 60% of TSH-secreting adenomas are multihormonal and 30–40% of GH-secreting adenomas co-secrete PRL. Most of classically considered null cell adenomas have been proved to be immunohistochemical positive for gon...

At least one fifth of pituitary adenomas exhibit plurihormonality when using immunohistochemistry for anterior pituitary hormones. However, the correlation with clinical features is weak, without an agreement upon pathological predictors of tumour behaviour.The aim was to determine the immunoreactivity for anterior pituitary hormones and alpha subunit in 276 consecutive pituitary adenoma patients, aged 22–79 years (44.3±8), 154 F/ 122 M: 83 acr...

Objectives: Pituitary adenomas usually do not over-secrete gonadotropins in the bloodstream, although they may stain for gonadotropins. Our study aimed to assess whether the pre-operative gonadotropin level in CSF could be used as a marker of the pituitary tumour’s gonadotropin secretion.Patients and methods: 359 patients with pituitary adenomas, diagnosed between 1979 and 2005 in the Institute of Endocrinology, Bucharest, were evaluated before pitu...

Background: There is a large agreement that most of the incidentally discovered, clinically mute adrenal masses are incidentalomas - non-functioning tumours, which have to be explored in order to differentiate the adrenal carcinoma.Material and methods: We studied the prevalence and characteristics of clinically mute adrenal tumours and the evolution of adrenal incidentalomas, with the approval of the local Ethical Committee, in 123 patients with adrenal...

Mitogenic signaling by receptor tyrosine kinases that involve increased activity of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) and over-activation of protein kinase B (PKB/Akt) triggers a cascade of responses that drive tumour progression in a variety of human cancers. Some of these events have been associated with diminished expression of the cell cycle inhibitor p27 through inhibition of a Forkhead transcription factor (FKHR-L1) by Akt, while some others have recently been reporte...

Background: The Phase III PAOLA study assessed the efficacy and safety of pasireotide LAR versus continued treatment with octreotide LAR or lanreotide Autogel in patients with uncontrolled acromegaly. The current analysis investigated overall baseline characteristics and response rates to pasireotide according to co-morbidities.Methods: Patients were classified into five groups of co-morbidities related to acromegaly: glucose- (n=104), endocrine...