Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Measurement of urinary cortisol is often used to assess disease activity in patients with suspected or proven hypercortisolism. However, specific reference ranges are lacking for some of the newer assays. This study analyzed upper limits of normal (ULN, mean+2S.D.) for two analytical procedures (GC–MS, ECLIA) in relation to various independent variables. Besides, the influence of different storage conditions was investigated (by ECLIA).<p ...

Introduction: Post-prandial hyperglycaemia seems to play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular complications of diabetes mellitus, as it leads to oxidative stress which in turn causes reduced NO bioavailability that produce endothelial activation.Aim: Aim of the study was to assure that the administration of N-acetylcysteine (NAC), thiolic antioxidant, is able to decrease oxidation status and endothelial activation after a high-gluc...

Introduction: Nitric oxide (NO) plays a wide spectrum of biological actions including a positive role in oocyte maturation and ovulation. Free radicals have been shown elevated in PCOS and therefore would be responsible for quenching NO that, in turn, would play a role in determining oligo or amenorrhea connoting PCOS. We recently demonstrated that the combined administration of N-acetylcysteine (NAC) and arginine (ARG) is able to exert an antioxidant action leading to ...

Subject: Inhibitors of CYP11B enzymes, particularly of aldosterone synthase, are currently under development as adrenostatic agents in heart failure or hyperaldosteronism, and for use in adrenal imaging. As CYP11B1 and CYP11B2 show high homology, analysis of specific binding to the respective human enzymes is of key importance.Methods: Y1 cell lines stably expressing hsCYP11B1 or hsCYP11B2 were established. Primary cultures of porcine and human adrenocor...

Acute and chronic alcohol intake and alcohol withdrawal induce dysfunction of neuroendocrine and other regulatory systems. The aims of this study were to assess a possible hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysfunction in population of alcoholics, using dexamethasone suppression test (DST). The study was approved by local Ethical Committee. The serum and urinary cortisol were compared between the groups of 89 male patients (64.5% depressive and 35.5% nondepressive alcoho...

We studied levels of T3, T4, FT3, FT4, rT3 and TSH concentrations in serum and FT3, FT4, rT3 and TSH concentrations in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in 10 patients with brain tumor and 20 patients with acute stroke and compared them to 7 patients in control group (further clinical evaluation in control group did not show brain lesions). All patients were euthyroid. The study was approved by loc...

BackgroundPapillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most frequent thyroid malignant neoplasm. American Thyroid Association (ATA) guidelines don’t specify how to follow-up low-risk PTC patients not receiving radioiodine therapy (RAI) after total thyroidectomy (TT). Indeed, there is no consensus among authors regarding the interpretation of thyroglobulin (TG) levels and ultrasound neck (US) findings during follow-up in these settings.<p class="abst...

Objective: Oxidative stress has been implicated in the pathogenesis of hyperthyroidism, and its complications. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs), compounds derived from non-enzymatic transformation of macromolecules, are able to increase oxidative stress and promote inflammation and are increased in several oxidative stress-related disorders, including autoimmune thyroiditis. In the same diseases, the activity of paraoxonase-1 (PON-1), an anti-oxidant enzyme protecting ag...

Introduction: The association between thyroid cancer and thyrotoxicosis is rare and, in particular, autonomous hyperfunctioning metastasis of differentiated thyroid cancer (TC) are seldom described, with a prevalence of 0.71%. Althought most hyperfunctioning metastasis are derived from follicular thyroid cancer (FTC), metastasis from papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) have been also reported. Bone metastasis account for the majority of cases. Hyperfunctioning TC metastasis have be...

Although androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) is commonly suspected as a cause of a 46,XY disorder of sex development (DSD), only about half of these cases can be attributed to an inactivating mutation within the coding sequence (CDS) of the androgen receptor (AR) gene. This led to the hypothesis that disrupted AR activation in AIS may also be caused by a defect in a co-factor of AR-activity. However, so far mutations in AR co-factors leading to AIS have not been ide...