Bilateral adrenal masses, increasingly encountered in clinical practice, manifest across diverse contexts, including incidental discovery, malignancy staging, and targeted imaging after hormonal diagnosis of adrenal disorders. The spectrum encompasses various pathologies, such as cortical adenomas, macronodular adrenal disease, pheochromocytomas, myelolipomas, infiltrative disorders, and primary and secondary malignancies. Notably, not all masses in both adrenal glands necessarily share the same etiology, often exhibiting diverse causes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Opin Endocrinol Diabetes Obes
June 2022
Purpose Of Review: To discuss the most recent findings on the pathophysiology, the genetic and molecular causes of primary bilateral adrenal hyperplasia (PBAH). The diagnostic approach of patients with PBAH will also be presented in detail with an emphasis on the emerging diagnostic tools and finally, the treatment of PBAH will be discussed with an emphasis on the newest surgical and medical treatment approaches.
Recent Findings: PBAH is a highly heterogeneous condition mostly detected incidentally on abdominal imaging.
Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol
July 2022
Context: Lymphocytic hypophysitis (LyHy) is characterized by inflammation of the pituitary and or neuroinfundibulum and is uncommon. Treatment options include observation, high-dose glucocorticoids (HD-GCs) or surgery. Optimal first-line management strategy, however, remains unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Benign adrenal tumors are commonly discovered on cross-sectional imaging. Mild autonomous cortisol secretion (MACS) is regularly diagnosed, but its effect on cardiometabolic disease in affected persons is ill defined.
Objective: To determine cardiometabolic disease burden and steroid excretion in persons with benign adrenal tumors with and without MACS.
The role of adipose tissue (AT) inflammation in AT function in humans is unclear. We tested whether AT macrophage (ATM) content, cytokine gene expression, and senescent cell burden (markers of AT inflammation) predict AT insulin resistance measured as the insulin concentration that suppresses lipolysis by 50% (IC50). We studied 86 volunteers with normal weight or obesity at baseline and a subgroup of 25 volunteers with obesity before and after weight loss.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare endocrine malignancy with a dismal prognosis and a high rate of recurrence and mortality. Therapeutic options are limited. In some cases, the distinction of ACCs from benign adrenal neoplasms with the existing widely available pathological and histopathological tools is difficult.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Increased visceral fat and sarcopenia are cardiovascular risk factors that may explain increased cardiovascular morbidity and frailty in patients with adrenal adenomas. Our objective was to compare body composition measurement of patients with adrenal adenomas to referent subjects without adrenal disease.
Design: Cross-sectional study, 2014-2018.
Objectives: Inhibitors to the checkpoint proteins cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) are becoming widely used in cancer treatment. However, a lack of understanding of the patient response to treatment limits accurate identification of potential responders to immunotherapy.
Methods: In this study, we assessed the expression of PD-1 and CTLA-4 on 19 leucocyte populations in the peripheral blood of 74 cancer patients.
Purpose: Skeletal muscle is the primary site for insulin-stimulated glucose disposal, and muscle insulin resistance is central to abnormal glucose metabolism in obesity. Whether muscle insulin signaling to the level of Akt/AS160 is intact in insulin-resistant obese humans is controversial.
Methods: We defined a linear range of insulin-stimulated systemic and leg glucose uptake in 14 obese and 14 nonobese volunteers using a 2-step insulin clamp (Protocol 1) and then examined the obesity-related defects in muscle insulin action in 16 nonobese and 25 obese male and female volunteers matched for fitness using a 1-step, hyperinsulinemic, euglycemic clamp coupled with muscle biopsies (Protocol 2).
Background: Cross-sectional imaging regularly results in incidental discovery of adrenal tumours, requiring exclusion of adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC). However, differentiation is hampered by poor specificity of imaging characteristics. We aimed to validate a urine steroid metabolomics approach, using steroid profiling as the diagnostic basis for ACC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) frequently cause thyroid dysfunction but their underlying mechanism remains unclear. We have previously demonstrated increased circulating natural killer (NK) cells and human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR surface expression on inflammatory intermediate CD14CD16 monocytes in programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) inhibitor-treated patients. This study characterizes intrathyroidal and circulating immune cells and class II HLA in ICI-induced thyroiditis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: Several studies have reported increased risk of fragility fractures in patients with mild autonomous cortisol secretion (MACS), discordant to the degree of bone density deterioration.
Objective: To evaluate the effect of MACS on bone metabolism in patients with adrenal adenomas.
Design: Cross-sectional study with prospective enrollment, 2014-2019.
Endocrinol Metab Clin North Am
December 2019
Hypertension is one of the commonest chronic diseases contributing to cardiovascular disease. Idiopathic (primary) hypertension accounts for approximately 85% of the diagnosed cases, and 15% of hypertensive patients have other contributing conditions leading to elevated blood pressure (secondary hypertension). Endocrine hypertension is a common secondary cause of hypertension.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Long-term follow-up is important for determining performance characteristics of thyroid fine-needle aspiration (FNA).
Methods: Histologic or 3 or more years of clinical follow-up was used to calculate performance characteristics of thyroid FNA before and after implementation of The Bethesda System for Reporting Thyroid Cytopathology (TBSRTC). The impact of noninvasive follicular thyroid neoplasm with papillary-like nuclear features (NIFTP) classification was also investigated.
Background: Adrenal incidentalomas are mostly benign nonfunctioning adrenal tumors (NFATs) or adenomas causing mild autonomous cortisol excess (MACE), but their natural history is unclear.
Purpose: To summarize the follow-up data of adults with NFAT or MACE to determine the proportions of tumor growth, malignant transformation, and incident changes in hormone function; the prevalence of incident cardiometabolic comorbid conditions; and mortality.
Data Sources: MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane, and Scopus (January 1990 to February 2019) and bibliographies of identified articles, without language restriction.
Incidentally discovered adrenal tumors are reported in ~ 5% of adults undergoing cross-sectional imaging. Mild autonomous cortisol secretion (MACS) from the adrenal mass is demonstrated in 5-48% of patients with adrenal tumors. The diagnosis of MACS represents a challenge due to limitations of the currently used diagnostic tests, differences in the definitions of the clinically relevant MACS, and heterogeneity in an individual's susceptibility to abnormal cortisol secretion from the adrenal mass.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe widespread use of cross-sectioning abdominal imaging in recent years has led to the increased detection of adrenal masses. In each case, determining whether a newly identified adrenal mass is benign or malignant is essential for management, but can be challenging. A significant proportion of adrenal lesions remain indeterminate after initial evaluation due to limitations of current imaging modalities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsoriasis is characterized by keratinocyte proliferation and chronic inflammation, but the pathogenesis is still unclear. Dysregulated mitochondria (mt) could lead to reduced apoptosis and extracellular secretion of mtDNA, acting as "innate pathogen" triggering inflammation. Serum was obtained from healthy volunteers and psoriatic patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To characterize large adrenal tumors (≥4 cm in diameter) and to identify features associated with malignancy.
Patients And Methods: We investigated the clinical, biochemical, and imaging characteristics in a large retrospective single-center cohort of patients with adrenal tumors of 4 cm or more in diameter during the period of January 1, 2000, through December 31, 2014.
Results: Of 4085 patients with adrenal tumors, 705 (17%) had adrenal masses measuring 4 cm or more in diameter; of these, 373 (53%) were women, with a median age of 59 years (range, 18-91 years) and median tumor size of 5.
Objective: While the left adrenal gland is readily accessible via endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA), data regarding the utility of EUS-FNA in the diagnosis of adrenal lesions remain limited. We aimed to ( 1) describe the clinical context, adverse event rate, and diagnostic performance of EUS-FNA, and ( 2) compare the safety profile and diagnostic accuracy of EUS-FNA with percutaneous adrenal biopsy.
Methods: Single-center, retrospective cohort study.
Context: Abdominal visceral adiposity and central sarcopenia are markers of increased cardiovascular risk and mortality.
Objective: To assess whether central sarcopenia and adiposity can serve as a marker of disease severity in patients with adrenal adenomas and glucocorticoid secretory autonomy.
Design: Retrospective cohort study.
Diabetes Technol Ther
October 2017
Background: Glucose variability (GV) has been increasingly (or more extensively) studied in patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) in the ambulatory setting; limited data exist on GV in hospitalized patients with T1D.
Materials And Methods: Retrospective single center cohort study, we analyzed in-hospital glucose measurements to assess GV in 736 hospitalized patients in different units over a consecutive 5-year period of time. GV was assessed by mean blood glucose (BG), Average daily risk range (ADRR), high BG index, and low BG index.