Endocrine Abstracts

Background: The mechanisms underlying the association between severe hypoglycaemia and increased cardiovascular mortality among patients with diabetes mellitus are not fully understood. Our aim was to evaluate changes in GH/IGF1 axis during insulin-induced hypoglycaemia, as a possible link.Methods: Twenty-five healthy subjects, 12 obese participants (OP; 6/ 6; 34.4±1.7 kg/m2), and 13 healthy lean participants (LP; 6/ 7; 21.7±0.6 kg/m...

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...

Introduction: Clinical presentation of pituitary adenomas frequently involves pain, particularly headache, probably due to both structural and functional properties of the tumour.Design: In a retrospective analysis, we investigated clinical characteristics of pain in 277 patients with pituitary disease (n=81 acromegaly; n=50 Cushing’s disease; n=86 prolactinoma; n=60 non-functioning pituitary adenoma). Specific pa...

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...

Objectives: Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare malignancy with incompletely understood pathogenesis and poor prognosis. Overexpression of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) has been demonstrated in several tumors and is partly associated with a more aggressive phenotype and a worse prognosis. In addition, targeting the EGFR tyrosine kinase represents a successful new therapeutic strategy, e.g. in non-small cell lung cancer. Therefore, we investigated the role of EGF...

Objective: Patients with adrenal insufficiency (AI) have been found to have increased cardiovascular morbidity, partly associated with nonphysiologic glucocorticoid replacement.Design: We included two separate cohorts (cohort 1 and 2) of patients with chronic primary and secondary AI under standard replacement therapy and compared them to two age- and sex-matched population-based studies (SHIP-TREND/DEGS). Patient cohort 1 comprised 389 individuals asses...

Background: Only few cases of patients with adrenal disorders affected by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been reported so far. In this study, clinical outcome data of patients with adrenal disorders and COVID-19 infection has been collected by the ESE Rare Disease Committee and ENDO-ERN via the European Registries for Rare Endocrine Conditions (EuRRECa) project.Methods: This questionnaire included 32 questions on collecting quantitative and qua...