Endocrine Abstracts

RCTs and real-life studies have shown the efficacy of GLP-1 RAs on weight loss, glycemic outcomes, and prevention of cardiovascular (CV) events, but long-term data are lacking. This was a retrospective cohort study of 253 patients with a first prescription of a GLP-1 RA between 2009 and 2016 and a minimum follow-up of 5 years. The endpoints of the study were weight and glycemic outcomes. Secondary endpoints were the occurrence of renal and CV events, comparing patients with GL...

Introduction: Occult neuroendocrine tumors are still a difficult diagnostic/therapeutic challenge.Case report: In November 2007, a 29-years-old Caucasian woman was admitted to our in-patients clinic with a 2-month history of rapidly progressing signs and symptoms of chronic hypercortisolism, including a bipolar disorder in psychosis. On admission the patient presented with hypokalemia (3.2 mEq/l), high levels of plasma (3164 nmol/l) and urinary free (26 ...

Treatment options for neuroendocrine tumors (NET), including everolimus, are rarely curative, as NETs frequently show resistance to medical therapy. In fact, the use of everolimus, an mTOR inhibitor, is limited by the development of resistance, probably due to the activation of Akt signalling. Metformin seems to have anticancer effects in neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). A recent retrospective study found longer progression-free-survival in diabetic pancreatic neuroendocrine tumo...

Objective: Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare malignancy, whose prognosis is mainly dependent on the stage at diagnosis. The identification of disease-associated markers representing solid biomarkers for early diagnosis and drug monitoring is mandatory to improve survival rate and life quality of patients. CTC are tumor cells originating from primary tumor or metastases. The tumor-induced angiogenesis and invasion allow aggressive tumors to release CTC into blood stream ...

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare tumor with poor prognosis due to its highly malignant phenotype and lack of effective treatment options.The etiology of ACC is still unknown. To better understand the pathogenesis of this type of tumor and to determine differentially abundant proteins and candidate biomarkers for adrenal cancer diagnosis and prognosis, we used a novel approach based on two-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE). Pr...

Somatostatin (SRIH) inhibits cell proliferation by interacting with five distinct SRIH receptor subtypes (SSTR) by several pathways in many tissues. We previously demonstrated that SRIH, by activating SHP-1, inhibits cell proliferation of the human Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma (MTC) cell line, TT, which expresses all SSTR. However, the effects of SRIH on cell cycle proteins have not been investigated, so far. We therefore investigated the effects of SRIH and of a selective SSTR...

Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a malignant tumour deriving from parafollicular C cells, with a highly chemoresistant phenotype. Failure of medical therapy has been ascribed, at least in part, to multi drug resistance (MDR1) gene over-expression. MDR1 encodes for a transmembrane glycoprotein, P-gp, which hampers intracellular accumulation of cytotoxic drugs. It has been demonstrated that P-gp expression and function depend on cyclo-oxygenase 2 (COX-2) expression, which is...

Background: Skeletal fragility is an important clinical issue in women with early-stage breast cancer and men with non-metastatic prostate cancer under hormonal hormone deprivation therapies (HDTs). Vertebral fractures (VFs) have been reported in a remarkable number of subjects exposed to HDT especially when the diagnosis of fractures is performed by a radiological and morphometric approach. Notably, prediction of fractures in this clinical setting is a challenge and determina...

Purpose: To genotype patients with head–neck paragangliomas (HNPGL) and evaluate the percentage and types of germ-line mutations in patients classified according to family history (FH) and clinical presentation.Design: In total, 101 consecutive patients with HNPGL were examined for mutations in SDHB, SDHC, SDHD. SDHAF2 and VHL genes by PCR/sequencing.According to a careful FH, clinical, laboratory (including meta...

Background: Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) is characterized by an excessive secretion of the parathyroid hormone (PTH) with normal or high calcium levels. The gold standard therapy involves minimally invasive parathyroidectomy with intraoperative PTH (ioPTH) monitoring. Different criteria have been identified when predicting cure rates using ioPTH values.Objective: To evaluate the percent ioPTH drop (ΔioPTH), the post-excision ioPTH, the first p...