Endocrine Abstracts

Follow-up of thyroid cancer patients is aimed at controlling the adequacy of thyroid hormone treatment and at the early diagnosis of recurrent disease.Long term thyroxine treatment is given at suppressive doses only in the few patients with persistent or recurrent disease. When cure has been assessed, serum TSH should be maintained in the normal range (around 1 μU/ml).The absence of disease is first controlled by the to...

Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is the most frequent endocrine congenital defect affecting about 1:3000 newborns. In economically/ socially advanced counties, CH is routinely screened by means of TSH (and/or T4) measurement on dry blood spot (dbs) since more than 20 years. Neonatal screening allows early recognition and treatment of affected newborns. Upon data collected in years <2000 by the Italian CH Registry, the newborns with confirmed CH and gland-in-situ constituted ...

In the healthy elderly there seems to be an age dependent decrease of TSH and FT3 but not FT4. The prevalence of TPOAb positivity increases with age but surprisingly it has been found to be decreased in centenarians. Antibody positivity is not predictive for future thyroid dysfunction in old age. The upper range of normal TSH for the healthy elderly living in sufficient iodine intake areas is higher than in case of iodine deficiency. In iodine deficient areas there is a high p...

Autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITD) comprise two clinical phenotypes, Graves’ disease and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. These conditions share distinct immunological features such as autoreactivity against the key thyroid autoantigens thyroglobulin and thyroid peroxidase. Considering Graves’ disease as well as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, twin studies have revealed a higher concordance rate among monozygotic (MZ) as compared to dizygotic (DZ) twins, suggesting a rela...