Endocrine Abstracts

The causal relationship between obesity and heart failure is broadly acknowledged; however, the pathophysiological mechanisms involved remain unclear. Besides hemodynamic changes, an alternative mechanism of cardiomyocytes apoptosis secondary to intracellular lipid accumulation has been proposed. However, this seems to be valid only for severe obesity but may not explain the increase in heart failure risk with mild-to-moderate overweight. Since adipocytes secrete a wide variet...

Purpose: Adrenal cancers are relatively rare, but they have poor prognosis. IGF2 has been confirmed as a factor of adrenal tumors development. Recent data indicate that ghrelin may be an essential factor in cancerogenesis. The aim of our study was to assess ghrelin expression in adrenal tumors, and to investigate the relationship between ghrelin, IGF2 and the clinicopathological characteristics. We also investigated the influence of ghrelin on adenocarcinoma cell line prolifer...