Thyroid volume and serum calcitonin changes during pregnancy.

Background: Pregnancy has a profound impact on thyroid homeostasis which results in change of thyroid function and thyroid volume (TV). Moreover, calcitonin (CT), and its gene-related peptide have been demonstrated to play an important role in the implantation process.

Purpose: To evaluate changes in TV and serum CT levels during pregnancy.

Current status of hormone receptor measurements in cancer patients.

Despite increasingly sophisticated techniques, improvements in the correlation between laboratory findings and tumor response to endocrine therapy have not been obtained by hormone receptor studies. A possible explanation is that present knowledge of the mechanisms of the endocrine stimulus is incomplete. Some aspects of the present model, (elevated conjugated steroid levels, multiplicity of the plasma proteins capable of binding hormones, pulsatility of the plasma protein bond and of the receptor system for steroids), are still unclear and thus are not used in diagnosis.

Development of laboratory hormone tests and their application in the monitoring of cancer patients.

In the endocrinologic study of dysplastic and neoplastic pathologies of hormone-dependent organs we propose the determination not only of the plasma levels of the "total" hormone but also those of the free hormone as well as the plasma/hormone binding capacity and the kinetics of the plasma/steroid interaction.