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- Bäcklund, Nils, et al.
(författare)
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Reference intervals of salivary cortisol and cortisone and their diagnostic accuracy in Cushing's syndrome
- 2020
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Ingår i: European Journal of Endocrinology. - : Bioscientifica. - 0804-4643 .- 1479-683X. ; 182:6, s. 569-582
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: The challenge of diagnosing Cushing's syndrome (CS) calls for high precision biochemical screening. This study aimed to establish robust reference intervals for, and compare the diagnostic accuracy of, salivary cortisol and cortisone in late-night samples and after a low-dose (1 mg) dexamethasone suppression test (DST). Design and methods: Saliva samples were collected at 08:00 and 23:00 h, and at 08:00 h, after a DST, from 22 patients with CS and from 155 adult reference subjects. We also collected samples at 20:00 and 22:00 h from 78 of the reference subjects. Salivary cortisol and cortisone were analysed with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The reference intervals were calculated as the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of the reference population measurements. Diagnostic accuracies of different tests were compared, based on areas under the receiver-operating characteristic curves. Results: The upper reference limits of salivary cortisol and cortisone at 23:00 h were 3.6 nmol/L and 13.5 nmol/L, respectively. Using these reference limits, CS was detected with a sensitivity (95% CI) of 90% (70-99%) and specificity of 96% (91-98%) for cortisol, and a 100% (84-100%) sensitivity and 95% (90-98%) specificity for cortisone. After DST, cortisol and cortisone upper reference limits were 0.79 nmol/L and 3.5 nmol/L, respectively. CS was detected with 95% (75-100%) sensitivity and 96% (92-99%) specificity with cortisol, and 100% (83-100%) sensitivity and 94% (89-97%) specificity with cortisone. No differences in salivary cortisol or cortisone levels were found between samples collected at 22:00 and 23:00 h. Conclusion: Salivary cortisol and cortisone in late-night samples and after DST showed high accuracy for diagnosing CS, salivary cortisone being slightly, but significantly better. © 2020 European Society of Endocrinology Printed in Great Britain.
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| 2. |
- Laurell, Cecilia, et al.
(författare)
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Transcriptional profiling enables molecular classification of adrenocortical tumours
- 2009
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Ingår i: European Journal of Endocrinology. - 0804-4643 .- 1479-683X. ; 161:1, s. 141-152
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: Tumours in the adrenocortex are common human tumours. Malignancy is however, rare, the yearly incidence being 0.5-2 per million inhabitants, but associated with a very aggressive behaviour. Adrenocortical tumours are often associated with altered hormone production with a variety of clinical symptoms. The aggressiveness of carcinomas together with the high frequency of adenomas calls for a deeper understanding of the underlying biological mechanisms and an improvement of the diagnostic possibilities. Methods: Microarray gene expression analysis was performed in tumours of adrenocortex with emphasis on malignancy as well as hormonal activity. The sample set consisted of 17 adenomas, 11 carcinomas and 4 histological normal adrenocortexes. RNA from these was hybridised according to a reference design on microarrays harbouring 29 760 human cDNA clones. Confirmation was performed with quantitative real time-PCR and western blot analysis. Results: Unsupervised clustering to reveal relationships between samples based on the entire gene expression profile resulted in two subclusters; carcinomas and non-cancer specimens. A large number of genes were accordingly found to be differentially expressed comparing carcinomas to adenomas. Among these were IGF2, FGFR1 and FGFR4 in growth factor signalling the most predominant and also the USP4, UBE2C and UFD1L in the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. Moreover, two subgroups of carcinomas were identified with different survival outcome, suggesting that survival prediction can be made on the basis of gene expression profiles. Regarding adenomas with aldosterone overproduction, OSBP and VEGFB were among the most up-regulated genes compared with the other samples. Conclusions: Adrenocortical carcinomas are associated with a distinct molecular signature apparent in their gene expression profiles. Differentially expressed genes were identified associated with malignancy, survival as well as hormonal activity providing a resource of candidate genes for an exploration of possible drug targets and diagnostic and prognostic markers.
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