Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Adrenal masses are discovered in 5% of cross-sectional abdominal imaging scans. Work-up aims at exclusion of malignancy and hormone excess. However, estimates of these risks presently derive from retrospective studies only, mostly small and with significant selection bias.Methods: Prospective multi-centre study (2011–2016) in 21 centres (17 countries) of the European Network for the Study of Adrenal Tumours (ENSAT) with consecutive enrol...

Background: Endogenous Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is rare with an estimated yearly incidence of 1–3 patients/million. CS describes a group of diseases that have in common an excess secretion of glucocorticoids which results in a characteristic clinical phenotype. Severe courses of Cushing’s syndrome are characterized by a break-down of protein catabolism translating into clinical consequences including muscle weakness. While remission of CS is achievable by surgica...

Background: Cushing’s syndrome (CS) is a chronic disorder characterized by endogenous cortisol excess resulting in long-term metabolic and cardiovascular consequences. The identification of metabolic alterations related to hypercortisolism could be beneficial in tailoring treatments of co-morbidities. Our aim was to characterize the metabolic alterations of patients with hypercortisolism by targeted plasma metabolomic profiling.Methods: Subjects (<e...

Primary aldosteronism (PA) describes the most frequent cause of secondary arterial hypertension. Aldosterone itself represents a BP-independent cardiovascular risk factor associated with increased rates of morbidity and mortality. Recently a worsening of lipid metabolism after treatment has been described.Objective: Our aim was to analyse changes in lipid parameters according to treatment outcome in PA patients. Data of 215 consecutive PA patients with u...

Context: Primary aldosteronism (PA) is the most common cause of secondary hypertension. Aldosterone excess can cause oxidative stress and respectively DNA damage in vitro and in vivo and increased levels of oxidative stress have been demonstrated in PA patients. Single case reports describe a coincidence of PA with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and other tumours. However, so far no data on the prevalence of benign and malignant neoplasms in patients with PA exis...

Autoimmune Addison’s disease (AAD) results from the immune mediated selective destruction of adrenal steroid hormone-secreting cells. Autoantibodies (Abs) against 21-hydroxylase (21OH) are diagnostic present in 85–90% newly diagnosed patients. Its genetic susceptibility is conferred by human leukocyte antigen (HLA) DQ2 and DQ8. In many patients autoimmunity extends forming the autoimmune polyglandular syndrome type 2 (APS-2). The aim of this study was to test, whethe...

Objectives: Endocrine gland-derived vascular endothelial growth factor (EG-VEGF; also termed prokineticin-1) has been identified as a mitogen preferable for the endothelium of steroidogenic glands (1). EG-VEGF and its receptors (prokineticin receptors 1 and 2; PKR1 and 2) are highly expressed in the normal adrenal gland and an autocrine mitogenic loop has been proposed (2). Therefore, we investigated the expression of EG-VEGF and its receptors in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC)...

Introduction: The role of surgery for recurrent ACC is not well defined. Therefore, we used the German ACC Registry to evaluate treatment modalities after first recurrence in patients amenable to surgery.Methods: Patients with recurrence after radical resection and follow-up data were included. Patients with extensive metastasized disease (>2 tumoral organs, peritoneal carcinomatosis) were excluded. Progression-free and overall survival (PFS/OS) were...

Subject: Adrenal tumours (AT) are often detected incidentally and represent a variety of differential diagnoses with variable therapeutic consequences. We have recently developed [123I]Iodometomidate ([123I]IMTO), that specifically binds to adrenal CYP11B enzymes as a SPECT tracer for adrenal scintigraphy. This radiotracer is now evaluated in patients with adrenal tumours in an ongoing clinical trial. The study was approved by the ethical committee and pa...

Objective: Hypokalemic Conn’s syndrome is a rare disease with a prevalence of 0.5% in unselected hypertensive populations. However, recent studies indicate a higher prevalence of a milder variant of Conn’s syndrome, reaching 10% in some studies. Long term outcome and health care costs of hypo- and normokalemic variants are largely unknown. The National Conn’s Registry is an initiative to create a national database of sufficient epidemiological strength to invest...