Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Addison’s disease is probably under-diagnosed in South Africa, given that the prevalence is considerably lower than reported in Western countries (Chabre O 2017); this is important as patients may be dying from a highly treatable condition. In addition, large populations of HIV and tuberculosis infected patients in South Africa may have some symptoms erroneously attributed to these conditions, rather than Addison’s disease. We determined the prevalence an...

Adrenocortical Carcinoma (ACC) is an aggressive malignancy with poor response to chemotherapy. Here we evaluated a potential new treatment target for ACC, focusing on the mitochondrial NADPH generator Nicotinamide Nucleotide Transhydrogenase (NNT). NNT has a central role within mitochondrial antioxidant pathways, protecting cells from oxidative stress. Inactivating human NNT mutations result in congenital adrenal insufficiency. We hypothesized NNT silencing in ACC cells will i...

The cytochrome P450 2W1 (CYP2W1) is an orphan enzyme able to activate anticancer pro-drugs and to metabolise endogenous substances as fatty acids and lysophospholipids. Aim of the study was to evaluate the frequency of CYP2W1 polymorphisms in patients with adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) and correlate it with the sensitivity to mitotane, which represents the only approved drug for the treatment of advanced ACC.Methods: A multicenter retrospective study in...

Introduction: Active hypercortisolism of Cushing syndrome (CS) determines major changes in the plasticity and function of metabolic key target tissues as the adipose tissue (AT). Persistence of target tissue altered metabolic memory after the cure/remission of Cushing syndrome is still at debate as clinical observational studies are limited due to confounder factors both in endogenous as exogenous CS. We postulate that after remission of hypercortisolism, adipose tissue (AT) p...

Background: Adrenal venous sampling (AVS) is critical to differentiate unilateral primary aldosteronism (PA) subtype. However, there are large discrepancies between institutions in the diagnostic criteria of AVS. Especially, the most major debate is in whether cosyntropin stimulation should be used for localization diagnosis or not. Segmental AVS (S-AVS) is a refinement of central AVS (C-AVS) in which samples are taken from the tributaries of the central adrenal veins allowing...

The 250 mg short synacthen test (SST) is the most commonly used tool to assess the integrity of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. There are many instances when compromise to HPA-axis function is potentially reversible (including the use of suppressive dose of prescribed glucocorticoids), but currently there are no data to guide clinicians as to the frequency of repeat testing or to the likelihood of HPA-axis recovery. We performed an observational, retrospective, anal...

Introduction: Primary aldosteronism (PA) is an important cause of hypertension. Adrenal hyperplasia (AH) and aldosterone-producing adrenocortical adenoma (APA) are considered the most frequent causes of PA. Histopathological analysis of unilateral PA has been difficult since no clear morphological criteria existed for defining aldosterone-producing cells. Recently, the distribution of adrenal cells forming aldosterone and cortisol has been studied by using specific monoclonal ...

Introduction: Cushing’s syndrome is rare, but assessment of patients with clinical suspicion of Cushing’s and/or adrenal incidentaloma is frequently required. Thus, there is a need for biochemical screening methods that with high sensitivity and specificity identifies or rule out hypercortisolism. Analysis of late night salivary cortisol allows an easy sampling procedure performed at home and is independent of variations in plasma CBG levels. Analysis by liquid chrom...

Introduction: Oral once-daily dual-release hydrocortisone (DR-HC) therapy provides a more physiological cortisol profile than conventional thrice-daily (TID) replacement therapy and has demonstrated improved metabolic profile among patients with adrenal insufficiency (AI). The mechanisms by which this metabolic improvement occurs may be due to less total exposure, changed cortisol time exposure profile, but also modified metabolism of cortisol.Objective:...

Introduction and objectives: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) represent a class of endogenous noncoding RNAs that have recently been recognized as important regulators of gene expression and pathological networks. However, investigations on adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) initiation and progression mechanisms only focus on key encoding genes, but neglect shedding an insight into circRNAs.Materials and methods: We investigated the expression profile of circRNAs in...