Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Everolimus is an oral mTOR inhibitor that exerts antineoplastic effects inhibiting cell proliferation, survival and angiogenesis. Its activity in advanced neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) has been demonstrated in controlled trials and everolimus was approved by the FDA for the treatment of progressive, advanced pNETs in May 2011.Materials and methods: We treated with everolimus, at the dosage of 10 mg once daily, 14 patients with advanced, prog...

Introduction: Metoclopramide is known to exert stimulatory effects on catecholamine secretion, having been used in the past as provocative test in the diagnosis of pheochromocytoma. We describe a patient with an incidentally discovered pheochromocytoma after metoclopramide administration.Case report: A 64 years-old woman underwent total thyroidectomy for multinodular goiter with ‘follicular proliferation Thy 3’ at FNAB of the target nodule. The...

Introduction: Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) and C cell hyperplasia (CCH) have a variable clinical presentation and prognosis and few data are available on the correlation between immunohistochemical characterization (IIC) and clinical behavior.Aim: We studied the clinical and morphological characterization of CCH and MTC and we evaluated IIC expression of PTTG-1, SSTR2A, VEGFR-1, VEGFR-2 and VEGFR-3 in 23 cases of CCH and/or MTC, correlating it with ...

Aim: To develop a cost-effective instrument to evaluate the preoperative malignancy risk of thyroid nodules (TNs).Patients&Methods: A meta-analysis of the clinical (C) and ultrasonographic (U) features associated with an increased risk of malignancy was conducted searching in the PubMed database. For each of them we computed the odds ratio and we consequently assigned a score. The resulted C+U score along with the 5-tiered score of fine-needle aspira...

The coexistence of pheochromocytoma and hyperreninemia secondary to renal artery stenosis, which both represent important causes of juvenile hypertension, has been reported in Literature, while association between pheochromocytoma and reninoma has never been described.We evaluated a 24-year-old boy, which came to our attention for severe hypertension, unresponsive to anti-hypertensive polytherapy. In 1996, because of elevated calcitonin levels (180 pg/ml...

Hirsutism affects 5–10% of women of reproductive age and may be the initial sign of an androgen disorder. We describe two cases of occult Sertoli-Leydig ovarian cell tumor suspected only on the basis of clinical and laboratory features.The first patient, a 42 year-old woman came to our attention for hirsutism. Several blood samples showed a very high testosterone concentration (~4 ng/ml), while non-ovarian causes of hyperandrogenism were excluded. A...

Clinical trials have demonstrated that pegvisomant therapy is highly efficacious, normalizing serum IGF-I levels in the majority of patients with acromegaly. Multiple factors could influence the dose of pegvisomant required to normalize IGF-I, that ranging from 10 to 40 mg/day. However, the determinants of this variability are unknown and, to date, there is no specific recommendation to adjust the dose to the type of patient. Lack of exon 3 of the Growth Hormone receptor (d3-G...

Myelolipomas are rare benign tumours resulting from myeloid and adipose mature cells proliferation, both elements have a clonal origin from a common precursor. Myelolipomas predominantly involve the adrenal gland but may develop in extra-adrenal sites. They are hormonally inactive but may coexist with active diseases such as adrenogenital syndrome. They are often asymptomatic but rarely they cause symptoms due to their size or spontaneous retroperitoneal haemorrhage. The myelo...

Oxidative stress is associated with chronic alcoholic abuse; it is also a mechanism involved in male infertility. To further investigate the relationships between these two conditions, we studied 6 patients with diagnosis of Alcohol Dependence (DSM-IV) during post-detoxification phase, who consulted our centre for infertility. We evaluated seminal parameters, hormone pattern, Total Antioxidant Capacity (TAC) and the lipophilic antioxidant Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), both in blood an...

Previously, we demonstrated an inverse correlation between CoenzymeQ10 (CoQ10) and thyroid hormones, suggesting its usefulness as index of thyroid hormone tissue effect. A low-T3 syndrome, observed in chronic diseases, is considered an adaptive mechanism and its treatment is still debated. To evaluate the metabolic status of these patients and antioxidant vs energetic role of CoQ10, we studied 32 patients, with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), comparing respirator...