Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Bone metabolism is impaired in several lipid storage diseases. At now no data are available in Fabry disease (FD), a genetic lipid storage disease characterized by systemic accumulation of glicolipids. The aim of this study was to evaluate bone metabolism and calcium/vitamin-D pathway in patients with FD.Methods/design: Study population included 15 FD patients (8 M and 7 F, age 28–59 years) and 15 sex-, age- and BMI-matched normal subj...

Octreoscan is currently the gold standard for diagnosis of somatostatin receptor positive NET but it is limited by a lower spatial resolution and physiological uptake noises. DOTATATE is a somatostatin analogue, radiolabelled with 68Ga and adapted for PET imaging.Aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of 68Ga-DOTATATE PET compared to Octreoscan in NET.Fifty-one patients with NET (40 sporadic, 17 MEN1) of diffe...

Differentiated thyroid cancers (DTC) have an excellent prognosis with a 10 year disease-related survival of 85%. However, about 5% of DTC patients develop an aggressive disease with distant metastasis and loss of radioactive iodine (RAI) avidity. An effective treatment is not available for these patients and survival rates are less than 15%. The MAP-kinase pathway is strikingly involved in the pathogenesis of DTC. This is why compounds striking the MAP-Kinase pathway may be us...

Somatostatin analogues (SSA) represent a recognized therapeutic option in patients affected with functioning neuroendocrine tumors (NET). In non-functioning NET, SSA are reported to induce tumor stabilization in most of cases and objective response in <5%. NET associated to Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia type 1 (MEN1) are inherited tumors, generally located in the duodeno-pancreatic trait, characterized by well differentiated histotype, high expression of somatostatin recept...

Autoimmune chronic thyroid disease (AITD) is associated with atrophic gastritis (CAG) in 29–42% of the cases. CAG and the consequent hypergastrinemia, listed as precancerous lesion, can predispose to neuroendocrine cells hyperplasia and the development of neuroendocrine gastric tumors (NET). Aim of this study was to evaluate the association of AITD with risk of gastric NET and the efficacy of somatostatin analogues treatment.Patients: From 2009 to 2...

Context: Until now the role of medical therapy in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (PHP) was mainly based on the use of bisphosphonates. Recently, cinacalcet hydrochloride was reported to be effective in control hypercalcemia in PHP. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of cinacalcet in PHP patients who were not effectively controlled with alendronate.Patients and methods: Fourteen PHP patients (mean age 64.1±2.6) were include...

AimThe aim of this study was to evaluate: a) the prevalence of a previously unknown endocrine / metabolic dysfunction, namely hypogonadism, thyroid dysfunction, hyperprolactinemia, and diabetes or prediabetes, in a population of patients affected by Erectile Dysfunction (ED); b) the differences in ED severity according to the presence/absence of specific endocrine / metabolic dysfunctions.Material and Methods...

Background: Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are characterized by long survival and slow progression. In the clinical practice adifferent types of endocrine-metabolic disorders can occur. Such disorders are either comorbidities related to the neoplasm or side effects of specific oncological treatments. The aim of this study is to evaluate type and prevalence of the endocrine-metabolic disorders in patients with gastroenteropancreatic (GEP) and lung NETs.Mate...

Introduction: Immune tumor microenvironment plays a key role in tumors’ growth and metastatic spread, while its role in the heterogeneous field of neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) remains unclear. There is evidence that tumor progression in NENs is promoted by an immunosuppressed microenvironment created by a plethora of infiltrating immune cells. Changes in circulating leukocyte and peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) subpopulations can mirror the local alteration of...

Background & Aim: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs) are detected in >80% of MEN1 patients. MEN1 pNETs are well differentiated G1-G2 NETs. They are usually not surged unless a size >1–2 cm or a growth rate >0.5 cm per year. Somatostatin analogues represent one of the main therapeutic option in patients affected with G1-G2 NETs. However, neither somatostatin analogues nor other therapies have been prospectively evaluated in clinical trials specificall...