No abstract

German Cardiac Society.

These results suggest that pHPT may increase peripheral and aortic BP through PTH and inflammatory-mediated mechanisms. A direct impact of the disease on the arterial wall cannot be implicated despite the large number of markers of subclinical atherosclerosis measured in this study.

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No abstract

In healthy postmenopausal women, FAI was directly associated with PWV, SI, and CAS. FAI also directly correlated with SBP, which in turn concurrently increased PWV and CAS. The directional correlations found herein, imply that endogenous androgens may be causally associated with indices of arterial stiffness both directly and indirectly. This hypothesis should be confirmed in further studies with causal design.

Objective: We aimed to evaluate the association between thyroid hormones and indices of obesity in a sample of euthyroid postmenopausal women. Design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: Serum levels of TSH, free triiodothyronine (FT 3 ), and free thyroxine (FT 4 ) as well as BMI and waist:hip ratio (WHR) were evaluated in 194 healthy euthyroid postmenopausal women. Ultrasonography was used to assess abdominal fat layers (subcutaneous fat (SF), preperitoneal fat (PF), and SF:PF ratio). Indices of adiposity were defined as high vs low depending on the median value of the assessed parameters. Results: After multivariate adjustment for traditional risk factors, lower FT 4 levels and a higher FT 3 :FT 4 ratio predicted higher SF mass (FT 4 , Exp(b)Z0.035, PZ0.020 and FT 3 :FT 4 , Exp(b)Z2.374, PZ0.018), whereas higher FT 3 predicted higher PF mass (Exp(b)Z2.815, PZ0.032). Women with FT 3 :FT 4 above the highest quartile had a significantly higher SF mass as compared to women in the lowest quartile (1.81G0.62 cm vs 1.54G0.46 cm, PZ0.027). BMI had a positive independent association with TSH (Exp(b)Z1.829, PZ0.018). Finally, FT 3 was significantly associated with SF mass among women with higher BMI (FT 3 , bZ0.259, PZ0.040) and women with higher WHR (bZ0.309, PZ0.020) but not among women with lower BMI or WHR values. Conclusion: Thyroid hormone levels, and in particular FT 3 , were independently associated with SF and PF in euthyroid postmenopausal women, and this association was mainly evident in women with higher BMIs. On the other hand, among traditional indices of adiposity, only TSH was positively associated with BMI. Larger prospective studies are needed to evaluate the significance of the present findings.

Adrenal cortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare cancer with poor prognosis that needs to be distinguished from adrenocortical adenomas (ACAs). Although, the recently developed transcriptome analysis seems to be a reliable tool for the differential diagnosis of adrenocortical neoplasms, it is not widely available in clinical practice. We aim to evaluate histological and immunohistochemical markers for the distinction of ACCs from ACAs along with assessing their prognostic role. Clinical data were retrospectively analyzed from 37 patients; 24 archived, formalin-fixed, and paraffin-embedded ACC samples underwent histochemical analysis of reticulin and immunohistochemical analysis of p27, p53, Ki-67 markers and were compared with 13 ACA samples. Weiss and Helsinki scores were also considered. Kaplan−Meier and univariate Cox regression methods were implemented to identify prognostic effects. Altered reticulin pattern, Ki-67% labelling index and overexpression of p53 protein were found to be useful histopathological markers for distinguishing ACAs from ACCs. Among the studied markers, only pathological p53 nuclear protein expression was found to reach statistically significant association with poor survival and development of metastases, although in a small series of patients. In conclusion, altered reticulin pattern and p53/Ki-67 expression are useful markers for distinguishing ACCs from ACAs. Immunohistopathology alone cannot discriminate ACCs with different prognosis and it should be combined with morphological criteria and transcriptome analysis.