Endocrine Abstracts

Exercise is one of the major determinants of a healthy lifestyle, being crucial in childhood as a powerful preventive tool. On the other hand, obesity and arterial hypertension rate has been increasing in children, thus increasing the risk of developing cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in adult life. Of vital importance is the modality and volume of exercise required to get benefits. In this feasibility study 35 obese children were enrolled. Autonomic and metabolic contro...

Despite the myocardial prolactin (PRL) binding activity and the known effect to enhance contractility in the isolated rat heart, little information is available concerning the cardiovascular consequences of hyperprolactinemia in humans. To elucidate the effects of chronic hyperprolactinemia on cardiac structure and function, twenty-four patients with isolated PRL-secreting adenoma and twenty-four controls underwent a complete mono- and two-dimensional Doppler echocardiography....

Background: Male hypogonadism is known to be associated with an increased incidence of cardiovascular (CV) events, although the underlying biochemical mechanisms are so far not fully understood. The clinical condition characterized by low levels of testosterone offers a unique model to unravel the possible role of lipoprotein-associated abnormalities in CV risk. In particular, the assessment of the functional capacities of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) may provide novel insi...

Introduction: Adrenal Insufficiency (AI) is characterized by absolute or relative deficiency of glucocorticoids and adrenal androgen precursors. Patients with AI show an impaired quality of life, metabolic status, immune function and dysregulated circadian genes. Data on sexual function are scarce and often contradictory. The aims of the present study are to evaluate sexual dysfunction (SD) in women and men patients with AI and to investigate the effects of restoring a more ph...

Introduction: The new Italian cytological classification of thyroid nodules published in 2014 has replaced the TIR3 ‘indeterminate’ category into two subcategory with different risk of thyroid cancer (TC): TIR3A, low-risk indeterminate lesion and TIR3B, high-risk indeterminate lesion. The aim of our study was to describe the incidence of TIR3B in a large prospective cohort of patients, the risk of TC, and its correlation with anamnestic, ultrasonographic (US) and cyt...

Introduction: Cushing’s Syndrome (CS) is associated with an increased frequency and severity of infections. Mild hypercortisolism (MI) from adrenal incidentalomas has been associated with various complications, but data on infections are scarce. Retrospective data on patients with adrenal insufficiency (AI) showed an increased mortality attributed to infections. The approach used was very heterogeneous for all these studies. The aim of the study is to prospectively evalua...

Background: Possible Autonomous Cortisol Secretion (pACS) is a condition found in 1–29% of patients with adrenal incidentalomas. The diagnosis of pACS has been variably associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events and mortality. However, dedicated studies describing the morphologic and functional cardiac alterations in these patients are lacking.Aim: To compare the cardiovascular features of patients with pACS to those with nonfunction...

Glucocorticoid actions in the brain are mediated by glucocorticoid receptors (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptors (MR). MR and GR bind endogenously circulating glucocorticoids, share a hormone response element in DNA, and are co-expressed in neurons of the hippocampus and hypothalamus. This arrangement suggests MR and GR functionally cooperate in the regulation of gene expression though hitherto poorly described mechanisms. This possibility was previously exampled by the demon...

ACTH resistance syndromes (ARS) are rare, severe and heterogeneous diseases that include either familial glucocorticoid deficiency (FDG) or Allgrove syndrome (AS). FDG is a rare autosomal recessive disorder resulting from mutation in genes encoding either the ACTH-receptor (ACTHR) in FDG1, or its accessory protein MRAP, in FDG2. AS is characterized by adrenal insufficiency due to ACTH resistance, alacrimia, and achalasia secondary to mutations in the AAAS gene, which ...

Somatostatin analogs (SSA) effectively control symptoms in neuroendocrine tumours (NET), besides showing antiproliferative activity. In progressive or metastatic NET, increasing SSA dose or shortening the dosing interval are common clinical practice, though empirical. Aim of this study is to evaluate efficacy and safety of high-dose SSA treatment in patients with progressive disease under standard SSA dose. Twenty-one patients (median age 56.8 years) with NET of different orig...