Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Somatostatin analogues (SSA) represent the main therapeutic option in patients affected with functioning well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumors (NET). However, after a variable time from the start of the therapy tachyphylaxys may cause lack of control of clinical syndrome and progression of the disease.Aim: The aim of this preliminary study was to evaluate efficacy in terms of reduction of circulating markers, control of the clinical syn...

Introduction: Medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) is a well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumor in which somatostatin receptor (sst) expression is higher for sst1 and sst5 than for sst2. This may explain why the available sst2–selective analogues do not work in these patients and why pasireotide (SOM230), a novel, multi-receptor targeted somatostatin analogue with high-binding affinity for sst1,2,3 and sst5 coul...

Dopamine receptors was suggested to be expressed in medullary thyroid cancer (MTC). The aim of the current study was to evaluate the expression of D2 dopamine receptor in MTC and the effectiveness of the dopamine agonist cabergoline in patients with MTC. Five paraffin-embedded cases of MTC obtained after thyroidectomy were used to evaluate D2 receptor expression by immunohistochemistry. Fifteen patients (7 males, 8 females, 36–78 years) with post-sur...

Surgical treatment is the first therapeutic option in patients affected with medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). However, cure-rates are often low due to the high frequency of loco-regional metastases and recurrences. Therefore, post-operative hyper-calcitoninemia is a common feature in CMT. Despite these findings, traditional imaging techniques are often unable to localize tumour foci. In the last years the availability of new morpho-functional techniques might offer new chanc...

Introduction: Natural history of lung neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) and in particular of two histological subtypes, atypical carcinoid (AC) and large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC), is poorly known.Aim of the study was to determine disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) of sporadic, resectable, non-metastatic lung AC and LNEC.Patients and methods: This retrospective study involved 116 consecutive patients surg...