Endocrine Abstracts

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Hypogonadism is still a poorly-defined clinical entity. Recently approved and published guidelines to diagnosis and treatment of hypogonadism claim the necessity of accompanying biochemical thresholds with clinical symptoms and monitoring under treatment a specific aspect of the ‘wide spectrum’ hypogonadism (libido, erection, bone mass, muscle strength and so on). This is due both to different levels of thresholds for different tissues and to individual variability.<...

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), the major product of the adrenal zona reticularis, is a crucial sex steroid precursor. Suppression of DHEA production in females, e.g. by exogenous glucocorticoids, results in significant overall androgen deficiency. The ovaries contribute to some extent to circulating female androgens, mainly by converting the precursor steroid DHEA to androgens directly binding and activating the androgen receptor, testosterone and dihydrotestosterone. Loss of ...

The discovery of naturally occurring, inactivating mutations of the aromatase gene and of the estrogen receptor (ER) gene in humans shed new light on the precise role of estrogen in several metabolic processes, both in male and female.To date, few clinical cases of males with well-documented congenital aromatase deficiency (11 females and 8 males) have been reported in medical literature. All mutations accounting for aromatase deficiency have been locate...