Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Nodular goiter is one of the commonest endocrinopathy. Its incidence increases with age accounting for more than 50% of subjects older than 60 years. Elderly subjects more frequently suffer from pressure symptoms. Loco-regional treatments, like laser photocoagulation and percutaneous ethanol injection, are a potentially useful tool to treat TNs but their efficacy is still debated. Radiofrequency thermal ablation (RTA) has been applied to several benign and malignan...

Introduction: In order to study the effect of age and testosterone on sleep related erections, we enrolled 209 men (122: age 30–49 years; 87: age over 50 years), including mild and severe hypogonadal subjects (129) and eugonadal subjects (80).Subjects and methods: The subjects were assigned to four groups, according to their testosterone serum levels. All the subjects underwent nocturnal penile tumescence and rigidity monitoring (NPTRM). The followi...

Introduction: Isolated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (IHH) often occurs in the pre-pubertal period but it can also manifest in post-puberal age. Recent position statements and guidelines differentiate between a ‘true’ hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, intended as congenital or acquired organic defect (characterized by frankly pathological total Testoterone values, TTe <3.5 nmol/l), and a ‘false’ or functional hypogonadism, associated to older age and comor...

Binge-eating disorder (BED) is characterized by recurrent (≥1 per week for 3 months), brief (≤2 h), psychologically distressing binge-eating episodes during which patients sense a lack of control and consume larger amounts of food than most people would under similar circumstances. The prevalence of BED is estimated to be between 2% and 3.5% and majority of individuals with BED are either overweight or obese. Most of the genetic research about eating disorders (ED)...

Background and aimsAlthough bone fracture risk increases in DM, bone mineral density does not completely reflect bone fragility. It is important to explore other methods of osteoporotic fracture risk evaluation. Nowadays bone turnover markers (BTM) investigation is not widely used in clinical practice. On the other hand, the action of some glucose-lowering drugs on bone remodeling is not completely explored. The aim of this study was to investigate and t...

Introduction: Hypoparathyroidism is the only endocrine deficiency for which replacement therapy with the missing hormone is not part of the clinical practice. High quality evidence on the use of PTH 1-34 or PTH 1-84 in hypoparathyroidism is missing.Objective: We aim to evaluate the efficacy and safety of PTH 1-34 and PTH 1-84, and to compare the two treatments when possible.Methods: We searched databases up to March 2021 for random...

Thyroid hormone (TH) signaling is essential for nervous system development. The clinical relevance of this simple statement is underscored by the severe neurological phenotypes resulting from global TH deficiency or perturbed local TH signaling during fetal development. A major aim of our research is to better understand the local action of TH during early human cortex development using cerebral organoids derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) as a model sys...

Introduction: Total thyroidectomy (TT) plus central neck compartment (CC) lymphnode dissection is still the recommended initial gold standard treatment for medullary thyroid cancer (MTC), even in the absence of a pre-surgical positive neck US evidence of lymphnode metastases. Considering the risk of surgical complications of this prophylactic surgery and the low rate of histologic finding of CC lymphnode metastases, a more tailored lymphnode’ surgery should be proposed. A...

Background: Distant metastases at diagnosis is the worst prognostic factor for disease specific survival (DSS) in sporadic medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). Also, lymph node metastases are negative prognostic factors both for DSS and recurrence free survival (RFS). The question whether central (N1a) and latero-cervical compartment lymph nodes metastasis (N1b), separately evaluated, can have a different impact on DSS and RFS remains to be clarified.Patie...

Introduction: RET gene is responsible for various human cancers and is mutated and hyperactivated in nearly 100% of familial (germline mutation) and in about 60% of sporadic (somatic mutation) MTC cases. Moreover, RET gene play a role in several physiologic and pathologic conditions. Very recently, the hyperfunction of RET was found to be a key process in weight loss. The hypothesis is that in a peculiar population in which RET gene is mutated and constitutively activated from...