Endocrine pancreatic tumors with glucagon hypersecretion: a retrospective study of 23 cases during 20 years.

Background: Glucagon-secreting endocrine pancreatic tumor is a rare disease, hence controlled studies on clinical management are lacking. In an attempt to assess the efficacy of diagnostic and therapeutic measures in patients with glucagonoma, a retrospective study was performed using the archives of a tertiary care center.

Patients And Methods: Records from 340 patients with endocrine pancreatic tumors were reassessed and 23 patients with malignant endocrine pancreatic tumor and elevated plasma glucagon levels were identified.

Temozolomide as monotherapy is effective in treatment of advanced malignant neuroendocrine tumors.

Purpose: A retrospective analysis of the toxicity and efficacy of temozolomide in advanced neuroendocrine tumors.

Experimental Design: Thirty-six patients with advanced stages of neuroendocrine tumor (1 gastric, 7 thymic and 13 bronchial carcinoids, 12 pancreatic endocrine tumors, 1 paraganglioma, 1 neuroendocrine foregut, and 1 neuroendocrine cecal cancer) were treated with temozolomide (200 mg/m(2)) for 5 days every 4 weeks. Patients had previously received a mean of 2.

Albumin-bound lipids induce free cytoplasmic calcium oscillations in human osteoblast-like cells.

[Ca(2+)](i) oscillations were found in human osteoblast-like cells (hOB cells) exposed to high-lipid bovine serum albumin (BSA), but not when exposed to low-lipid BSA. These [Ca(2+)](i) oscillations were inhibited by heptanol and suramin, which implies that gap junctions and purinergic signalling may be important for these [Ca(2+)](i) oscillations. The high-lipid BSA preparation that was used contains arachidonic acid.