Endocrine Abstracts

Thyroid neoplasias show a wide range of biological behaviours from indolent to highly aggressive, invasive and metastatic cancers. The great majority of thyroid carcinomas are successfully treated with surgery, radioactive iodine and TSH suppressive therapy. However, a subset of tumors can behave aggressively, with distant metastasis and/or local invasion. These patients have a poor prognosis and a shorter survival, remaining a challenging task in treatment options. Cytotoxic ...

Multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN) syndromes are classically defined as the occurrence of two or more endocrine tumours in a patient, and include two major forms, characterized by development of tumours within specific endocrine glands, referred to as type 1 (MEN1) and type 2 (MEN2). These disorders are due to mutations in the MEN1 gene in MEN1 (parathyroid, pituitary or pancreatic tumours), and in the RET gene in MEN2 (which comprises three types: MEN2A with...

Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) of papillary (PTC) and follicular (FTC) types with invasive loco-regional or metastatic disease, poorly differentiated (PDTC) and anaplastic thyroid cancers (ATC), as well as the C-cell derived medullary thyroid cancers (MTC), represent the major cause of mortality amongst thyroid cancer patients. Because such patients are resistant to standard therapy, they may be excellent candidates for innovative adjuvant approaches such as molecular tar...

In a series of 66 sporadic medullary thyroid carcinomas (MTC) we looked for mutations in RET, RAS and BRAF protooncogenes and correlated mutational analysis with the clinicopathological data of the patients. We performed PCR amplification and sequencing analysis of exons 5, 8, 10–16 of RET, of the three mutational hotspots (codons 12, 13, and 61) of the H-, K-, and N-RAS genes, and of the mutational hotspot (codon 600) and exon 11 of the BRAF gene. Somatic RET mutations w...

Introduction and objectives: Poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma (PDTC) is a rare but aggressive thyroid tumor. PDTC frequently presents in advanced stages and conventional treatments are usually less effective than in differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC). Lenvatinib is a multi-kinase inhibitor approved for the treatment of radioiodine-refractory DTC, with significant improvement in progression free survival. Despite the inclusion of a minority PDTC patients in SELECT tr...

Introduction: Struma ovarii (SO) is a rare ovarian teratoma characterized by the presence of thyroid tissue in >50% of the tumour. Malignant transformation is rare and defined by the same histological criteria as for thyroid cancer. There is few data on the literature and treatment is controversial. The objective of this study was to describe the clinical, pathologic and treatment characteristics of women diagnosed with SO in our centre.Methods: Retr...

Backgroud: Distant metastases from papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) are infrequent and associated with poor prognosis. Adrenal metastatic lesions in this setting are rare, generally associated with lung and skeletal metastases. There have been few reported cases of isolated adrenal metastases from thyroid carcinoma. Here we report a patient with a PTC who developed a large and solitary adrenal metastasis.Case Presentation: A 68-year-old men was submitted i...

Introduction: Paraganglioma (PGL) is a neuroendocrine tumor derived from extra adrenal autonomic paraganglia with a germinal mutation rate of 30%. Metastatic paraganglioma (MPGL) can only be predicted after evidence of secondary lesions and it can occur in up to 50% of cases. Clinical course is remarkably variable, but 5-year overall survival is generally around 50%. Treatment options include surgical resection, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and 123I-MIBG. Being a neu...

Advanced papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) with cutaneous metastases may cause pain, ulceration and bleeding. Electrochemotherapy (ECT) is a minimally invasive oncologic treatment of tumours located in the skin and subcutaneous tissue. The electric pulses potentiates the toxicity of a cytostatic agent entering the tumour cell. It is highly effective especially to relieve pain and improve quality of life. The adverse events are local and transient. A case of progressive metasta...

Background: Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) is the most common type of thyroid carcinoma, but it rarely presents as an intrathoracic mass with concurrent hyperthyroidism due to Graves disease.Case presentation: A 73-year-old man presented with weight loss. Imaging by computed tomography (CT) documented a large mediastinal mass in the infrathyroidal space separate from the thyroid gland and pulmonary lesions suggestive of metastases. Neck ultrasound showed...