GATA transcription factors in testicular adrenal rest tumours.

Testicular adrenal rest tumours (TARTs) are benign adrenal-like testicular tumours that frequently occur in male patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Recently, GATA transcription factors have been linked to the development of TARTs in mice. The aim of our study was to determine GATA expression in human TARTs and other steroidogenic tissues. We determined GATA expression in TARTs ( = 16), Leydig cell tumours (LCTs;  = 7), adrenal (foetal ( = 6) + adult ( = 10)) and testis (foetal ( = 13) + adult ( = 8)). We found testis-like , and adrenal-like and gene expressions by qPCR in human TARTs, indicating mixed testicular and adrenal characteristics of TARTs. Currently, no marker is available to discriminate TARTs from LCTs, leading to misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment. and mRNAs exhibited excellent discriminative power (area under the curve of 0.908 and 0.816, respectively), while immunohistochemistry did not. GATA genes contain several CREB-binding sites and incubation with 0.1 mM dibutyryl cAMP for 4 h stimulated , and expressions in a human foetal testis cell line (hs181.tes). Incubation of adrenocortical cells (H295RA) with ACTH, however, did not induce expression Although ACTH did not dysregulate expression in the only human ACTH-sensitive model available, our results do suggest that aberrant expression of GATA transcription factors in human TARTs might be involved in TART formation.