Endocrine Abstracts

Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) can be sporadic or can arise in complex hereditary endocrine disorders such as multiple endocrine neoplasias (MENs), familial paragangliomatosis (FPGLs), neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), von Hippel–Lindau disease (VHL), tuberous sclerosis (TSC). It has been estimated that hereditary NET occurrence varies with site of origin of the tumour, representing 5–30% of all cases of NET. These rates seems to be an underestimation and novel mutation...

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...

Introduction: Fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET) is an innovative method for the detection of primary tumours or metastases of thyroid cancer; however, recurrence or metastases of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) are still difficult to detect.Aim: The objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical use of 18F-FDG PET in patients with MTC.Patients and methods: We enr...

Somatostatin analogs (SSA) effectively control symptoms in neuroendocrine tumours (NET), besides showing antiproliferative activity. In progressive or metastatic NET, increasing SSA dose or shortening the dosing interval are common clinical practice, though empirical. Aim of this study is to evaluate efficacy and safety of high-dose SSA treatment in patients with progressive disease under standard SSA dose. Twenty-one patients (median age 56.8 years) with NET of different orig...

Introduction: Recent data suggest that metformin has antineoplastic properties in different type of cancer. Effects of metformin have never been investigated in neuroendocrine tumors (NET).We aim to determine the role of metformine on recurrence-free survival (RFS) in NET patients.Materials and methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted comparing NET patients with recent diagnosis (<3 year) of diabetes mellitus (with HbA1c...

Introduction: PHPT is a common endocrine disease characterized by hypercalcemia and different degree of osteoporosis and nephrolithiasis. PHPT arises in the context of an inherited disease in 5% of cases. Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN1) is the commonest cause of inherited PHPT. The main therapeutic approach for PHPT is surgery, however many patients refuse or have contraindications for surgery while others, in particular those with MEN1 PHPT, have persistent/relapsi...

Introduction: Targeted therapy with the multi-kinase inhibitor sorafenib is effective for treatment of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) unresponsive to RAI. Although kinase-inhibitors (KIs) are usually well tolerated, severe and even fatal adverse events are reported. Aim of the study was to assess incidence and characteristics of fatal events in patients with RAI-refractory DTC responsive to treatment with sorafenib.Design: A retrospective analysis o...

Introduction: Paragangliomas are neuroectodermal tumors that arise from adrenal medulla or extra-adrenal ganglia and are characterized by high vascularisation. A high rate of these tumours is genetically inherited. For malignant paragangliomas, chemo- and radio-therapy are potentially effective, but tumor response is of short duration and patient prognosis is quite poor. Sunitinib is a tyrosine-kinase inhibitor, targeting VEGFR1, -2, PDGFRα, -β, RET and c-Kit. Recent...