Endocrine Abstracts

Pituitary adenomas are frequent intracranial tumors that often associate with the hypersecretion of pituitary hormones or may be non-secreting (nonfunctioning pituitary adenomas, NFPA). Tumors resembling human NFPAs develop with complete penetrance in rats affected by the multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome, MENX. This syndrome is caused by a germline loss of function mutation in p27Kip1. Gene expression array analysis performed in our group identified a considera...

Introduction: Profound thyrotoxicosis commonly presents with heat intolerance, sweating, weight loss, palpitations, tremor, goitre and eye signs in the case of Grave’s disease. Typically, thyroid storm is differentiated by marked volume depletion, congestive cardiac failure, cardiac arrhythmias, confusion, nausea and vomiting, often with extreme agitation. The wide-ranging and systemic manifestations associated with profound hyperthyroidism are mediated through the thyroi...

Pituitary adenomas (PAs) are benign neoplasms that comprise 10–20% of all intracranial tumors. Mutations in the aryl hydrocarbon receptor interacting protein (AIP) have been identified to cause a small subset of hereditary PAs. To study the mechanisms of tumor formation in patients with AIP-mutated PAs we conducted a miRNA array analysis comparing AIP-mutated PAs with AIP-wild type PAs. We found a novel and specific set of miRNAs differentially expressed between the two g...

Introduction: Rats carrying a germline loss-of-function mutation in p27 (MENX syndrome) develop bilateral pheochromcoytoma (PCC) with complete penetrance. Gene expression profiling of rat PCCs identified genes highly expressed in tumors vs normal adrenal medulla. Several of them were found up-regulated also in human PCCs (both sporadic and familial), including the BMP7 gene encoding a member of the bone morphogenic protein family. BMP7 has been shown to be involved in other hu...