Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: In humans, prostate PDE5 expression was prominently localized in the endothelial and smooth muscle cells of the vascular bed, suggesting a possible action of PDE5 inhibitors on prostate blood flow.Aim: To investigate PDE5 expression in human and rat lower urinary tract (LUT) tissues and determine the effects of PDE5 inhibition with tadalafil on prostatic blood perfusion.Main outcome measures: Human vesicular-deferenti...

Introduction: Several studies suggested a direct relationship between metabolic syndrome (MetS) and increased risk of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). An inflammatory component, mainly mediated by IL-8, has been proposed as the primary link between MetS and BPH pathogenesis. MetS, is often associated with testosterone (T) deficiency and an imbalance between the androgen and estrogen ratio characterizes BPH patients.Methods: We investigated the effects...

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a clustering of cardio-metabolic risk factors (hyperglycemia, hypertension, dyslipidemia, visceral fat accumulation) that is also associated with hypogonadism and erectile dysfunction (ED). The study was aimed at clarifying the relationships among MetS, hypogonadism, and ED, we developed an animal model of MetS.Methods: Male rabbits fed a high-fat diet (HFD), with or without testosterone (T) supplementation, were compared wit...

In male, lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) have been associated, beside benign prostatic hyperplasia, to some unexpected co-morbidities, such as hypogonadism, obesity and metabolic syndrome, which are essentially characterized by an unbalance between circulating androgens and estrogens. Within the bladder, LUTS have been linked to overactivity of the RhoA/ROCK pathway. Here we investigate the effects of changing sex steroids on bladder smooth muscle. The effects of androgens...

Patients (pts) with adrenal incidentaloma (AI) may show an increased incidence of several cardiovascular risk factors, as obesity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia. As previous data suggested that the increased cardiovascular risk in these pts could be in part mediated by alterations of adipokines, this study was aimed to evaluate plasma IL-6, resistin, CT-1 levels in a wide series of pts with AI.Ninety-three pts (42 males; 51 females; ag...

Background: Several criteria (i.e., cortisol supprimibility after 1 mg overnight dexamethasone suppression test -F-dex-, low ACTH levels, high 24 h urinary free cortisol levels -UFC-, high midnight serum cortisol levels) have been used for defining SH. Nevertheless, a real gold standard combination of tests is lacking. Recently midnight salivary cortisol (MSC) has been described as a sensitive marker for the diagnosis of overt hypercortisolism, while the role of MSC in the dia...

One of the proposed mechanisms responsible for Diabetes mellitus (DM)-associated erectile (ED) dysfunction is overactivity of RhoA/ROCK signalling. Because statins may decrease RhoA activation, we investigated whether atorvastatin ameliorated DM-induced ED in alloxan-treated (100 mg/kg) rabbits (in vitro studies) and streptozotocin-treated (STZ, 50 mg/kg) rats (in vivo studies). A subgroup of diabetic animals received atorvastatin 5 mg/kg per daily 2 weeks before...

A previous study demonstrate that chronic tadalafil administration (2 mg/kg per day) was able to prevent some, but not all, penile alterations induced by long-term (3 months) bilateral cavernous neurotomy (BCN) in the rat. In particular, in vitro acetylcholine responsiveness and reduced eNOS and nNOS expression were not preserved, while PDE5 down-regulation, along with muscle/fiber ratio and hypoxygenation (hypoxyprobe) were significantly restored by chronic tadalafil (...

Epididymis (epi) is a sex steroid-sensitive duct provided with spontaneous motility, allowing sperm transport. We previously demonstrated that human epi expresses a high abundance of mRNA for ER-alpha and ER-beta. We demonstrated that in epi estrogens up-regulate either oxytocin (OT) responsiveness, acting at the receptor level, and responsiveness to endothelin-1 (ET-1), another well-known stimulator of epididymal motility. However, we did not find any significant change eithe...

Previous studies suggest that in patients with adrenal incidentalomas (AI) subclinical hypercortisolism (SH) exerts a deleterious effect on bone mineral density (BMD), but scarce data are available about vertebral fractures. We evaluate BMD and prevalence of vertebral fractures in a sample of AI subjects with and without SH.Forty-seven consecutive AI inpatients were evaluated (17M, 30F). The patients were subdivided into two groups: with or without subcl...