Endocrine Abstracts

The existing follow-up studies on patients with incidentally discovered adrenal adenoma (AA) focused almost exclusively on repeat imaging and endocrine work-up on a short period.Of consecutive 152 patients with AA referred to our center from 1989 to 2003, we have assessed the risk of developing metabolic disorders and vascular complications in the 74 patients who did not underwent surgery (51 women and 23 men, median age 57, range 25–74 years) durin...

Recent guidelines recommend to use the 1-mg DST to screen for subclinical hypercortisolism assuming that a post-DST cortisol >5.0 μg/dl define this condition. However, several experts suggest a more sensitive cut-off at 1.8 μg/dl while others consider mandatory to confirm unsuppressibility with a 8-mg DST. A consecutive series of 64 patients (22 men, 42 women, aged 28–81 years) with clinically inapparent adrenal adenoma were studied between 2005 and 2007. Th...

N363S polymorphism of the human glucocorticoid receptor gene has been detected in the heterozygous state in approximately 3–9% of general European population. This variant has been associated with increased sensitivity to glicocorticoids, increased insulin response to dexamethasone, a tendency towards lower bone mineral density, increased body mass index, and unstable angina. However, other reports found no associations with these pathological conditions. We assessed the ...

The effects of glucocorticoids are mediated by the glucocorticoid receptors (GR) and some single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been associated to enhanced sensitivity (N363S, BclI) or reduced sensitivity (ER22/23EK) to glucocorticoids.Aim of the present study was: 1) to assess the frequency of N363S, BclI and ER22/23EK in 46 patients with Cushing’s syndrome (CS) and 73 patients with adrenal incidentaloma (AI) compared to 186 healthy subjects;...