Pretreatment IGF1 levels are important predictors of morbidity and mortality in acromegaly. The full hormonal control of the disease, nowadays reached in the majority of patients with modern management, reduces greatly the disease-related mortality.

Nodular thyroid disease is a very common finding in\ud clinical practice, discovered by ultrasound (US) in about\ud 50 % of the general population, with higher prevalence in\ud women and in the elderly [1–4].\ud Whereas therapeutic flowchart is quite established and\ud shared for malignant lesions, multiple options are now\ud available for patients presenting with benign thyroid nod-\ud ules, ranging from simple clinical and US follow-up to\ud thyroid surgery. The majority of thyroid nodules, benign by\ud fine-needle aspiration, are asymptomatic, stable, or slow-\ud growing over time and require no treatmen

In recent years, endocrine disrupting chemicals have gained interest in human physiopathology and more and more studies aimed to explain how these chemicals compounds affect endocrine system. In human populations, the majority of the studies point toward an association between exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals and the disorders affecting endocrine axis. A great number of endocrine disrupting chemicals seem to be able to interfere with the physiology of hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis; however, every endocrine axis may be a target for each EDCs and their action is not limited to a single axis or organ. Several compounds may also have a negative impact on energy metabolic homeostasis altering adipose tissue and promoting obesity, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes. Different mechanism have been proposed to explain these associations but their complexity together with the degree of occupational or environmental exposure, the low standardization of the studies, and the presence of confounding factors have prevented to establish causal relationship between the endocrine disorders and exposure to specific toxicants so far. This manuscript aims to review the state of art of scientific literature regarding the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on endocrine system.

Gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (GEP NETs) are rare tumours that present many clinical features.They secrete peptides and neuroamines that cause distinct clinical syndromes, including carcinoid syndrome. However, many are clinically silent until late presentation with mass effects.In 2000 the WHO developed a new classification which gives a better description of the characteristics and biological behaviour of the tumour.Surgical resection is the treatment of first choice for a patient with a GEP NET. In metastatic disease multiple therapeutic approaches are possible. In these cases the goal is to improve quality of life and to extent survival.GEP NETs express somatostatin receptors (SSTRs), which are bound by somatostatin (SST) or its synthetic analogues, although the subtypes and number of SSTRs expressed is very variable.Somatostatin analogues are used frequently to control hormone-related symptoms while their anti-neoplastic activity, even if it has not been widely studied and the regarding data are discordant, seems to result prevalently in tumour stabilisation.A few patients who fail to respond or cease to respond to standard SST analogues treatment seem to have a response to higher doses of these drugs.The use of higher doses of somatostatin analogues or the development of new subtype selective agonists and chimaeric somatostatin analogues, or pan-somatostatin will probably improve the clinical management of these patients.This review provides an update on the use of somatostatin analogues in the management of GEP NETs and discusses novel clinical strategies based on SSTR 2 gene transfer therapy.

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