Patient’s Atypical Cushing’s Symptoms Lead to Discovery of Novel Genetic Mutations

Posted on February 14, 2018 by MaryO

New genetic mutations were found in a patient who exhibited atypical symptoms of Cushing’s syndrome, notably an abnormal protrusion of the eye, a case report shows.

The research, “Extensive ARMC5 genetic variance in primary bilateral macronodular adrenal hyperplasia that started with exophthalmos: a case report,” was published in the Journal of Medical Case Reports.

Primary bilateral macronodular adrenal hyperplasia (PBMAH) is a disorder characterized by multiple lumps in the adrenal glands and excessive cortisol production. It is a rare cause of Cushing’s syndrome.

According to recent research, PBMAH is caused by mutations in the ARMC5 gene, which data suggest may act as a tumor suppressor.

Researchers presented the case of a 52-year-old Chinese woman who exhibited a protrusion of both eyes (exophtalmos), which was first thought to be Graves’ ophthalmopathy. An injection of triamcinolone acetonide, a corticosteroid, into the area behind the eye globe did not improve symptoms.

The patient later was diagnosed with diabetes, which was treated with insulin, and hypertension, treated with insulin and amlodipine. She also developed muscle weakness and bruised easily. She had no other relevant chronic illness or infectious disease, and did not smoke tobacco or drink alcohol.

Physical examination showed skin atrophy, moon face, buffalo hump (between the shoulders), and purplish abdominal striae (stretch marks), which researchers defined as a typical Cushingoid appearance. The patient also experienced elevated pressure inside the eye, and had edema, conjunctival congestion, and lid retraction. No liver, spleen, respiration, cardiac, abdominal, blood counts, urinary, sensory, or motor abnormalities were noted.

Biochemical evaluation showed elevated cortisol and reduced adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) levels. Administering  dexamethasone did not lower the level of cortisol. Abnormal responses of the hormone vasopressin also were detected.

A computed tomography (CT) scan of the adrenal glands showed bilateral multiple lobular masses, and an MRI of the eye orbits indicated bilateral exophthalmos with hypertrophy of the retro-orbital fat, which lines the orbit.

After PBMAH was diagnosed, the patient’s adrenal glands were removed. Pathological findings showed multiple, homogenous, golden-yellow-colored nodules on the glands.

The surgery successfully lowered the level of cortisol and increased that of ACTH. The patient began taking hydrocortisone and metformin for diabetes. After six months, her exophtlamos, blood glucose levels, and blood pressure had improved.

Genetic analysis revealed six specific ARMC5 mutations in five of the seven adrenal nodules analyzed. “All the mutations are novel and not found in available online databases,” the researchers wrote. The mutations may lead to resistance to cell death in the tumor cells, and cause an increase in the production of cortisol, they observed.

As a result of the ARMC5 mutations, gene expression (conversion of genetic information) of the messenger RNA (mRNA, which is converted from DNA in the first step of protein synthesis) was lower in the adrenal tumor samples, in comparison with normal adrenal cortex.

Overall, the study “highlights the importance of early recognition of atypical symptoms of Cushing’s syndrome such as exophthalmos, which would save the patient from harmful effects of excessive cortisol exposure,” the researchers said. Screening for ARMC5 mutations also would help improve diagnosis and genetic counseling, they said.

From https://cushingsdiseasenews.com/2018/02/13/odd-cushings-symptoms-linked-genetic-mutations-case-report/

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Common Cushing’s Treatment, Somatostatin Analogs, May Sometimes Worsen Disease Course

Posted on December 30, 2017 by MaryO

Doctors often prescribe somatostatin analogs to manage the hormonal imbalance that characterizes Cushing’s syndrome. However, in rare situations these medicines have paradoxically made patients worse than better.

This recently happened with a 48-year-old Spanish woman whose Cushing’s syndrome was caused by an adrenal gland tumor that was producing excess adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). Her case was recently reported in the study “Ectopic Cushing’s syndrome: Paradoxical effect of somatostatin analogs,” and published in the journal Endocrinología, Diabetes y Nutrición.

Cushing’s syndrome occurs when the body produces too much cortisol. This can happen for many reasons, including an oversupply of ACTH, the hormone responsible for cortisol production, due to a tumor in the pituitary gland.

But sometimes, tumors growing elsewhere can also produce ACTH. This feature, known as ectopic ACTH secretion (EAS), may also cause ACTH-dependent Cushing’s syndrome.

Two-thirds of EAS tumors are located in the thorax, and 8 to 15 percent are in the abdominal cavity. Only 5 percent of EAS tumors are located in the adrenal gland, and up to 15 percent of EAS tumors are never detected.

Doctors usually use cortisol synthesis inhibitors such as ketoconazole or Metopirone (metyrapone) to control EAS, due to their efficacy and safety profiles. But somatostatin analogs (SSAs) such as Somatuline (lanreotide) have also been used to treat these tumors. However, these drugs produce mixed results.

The woman in the case study, reported by researchers at the University Hospital Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona, Spain, had an EAS tumor on the adrenal gland. She experienced s life-threatening cortisol and ACTH increase after receiving high-dose Somatuline.

The patient had been recently diagnosed with hypertension, and complained of intense fatigue, muscular weakness, easy bruising and an absence of menstruation. Laboratory analysis revealed that she had triple the normal levels of free cortisol in the urine, elevated levels of plasma cortisol, and high ACTH levels. In addition, her cortisol levels remained unchanged after receiving dexamethasone. The patient was therefore diagnosed with ACTH-dependent Cushing syndrome.

To determine the origin of her high cortisol levels, the team conducted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They found no tumors on the most common places, including the pituitary gland, neck, thorax or abdomen. However, additional evaluation detected a small alteration on the left adrenal gland, suggesting that was the source of ectopic ACTH production.

The team initiated treatment with 120 mg of Somatuline, but a week later, her condition had worsened and become life-threatening. Doctors started Ketoconazole treatment immediately, three times daily. The affected adrenal gland was surgically removed, and tissue analysis confirmed the diagnosis. The patient’s clinical condition improved significantly over the follow-up period.

“We highlight the need to be aware of this rare presentation of EAS, and we remark the difficulties of EAS diagnosis and treatment,”  researchers wrote.

The team could not rule out the possibility that the patient’s clinical development was due to the natural course of the disease. However, they believe “she had a paradoxical response on the basis of her dramatical worsening just after the SSAs administration, associated to an important rise in ACTH and UFC levels.”

For that reason, researchers think a new version of SSAs, such as Signifor (pasireotide) — which has improved receptor affinity — could provide better therapeutic response.

From https://cushingsdiseasenews.com/2017/11/09/paradoxical-effects-of-somatostatin-analogs-on-adrenal-ectopic-acth-tumor/

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Pituitary Gland Resection May Help Manage Presumed Cushing’s Patients

Posted on December 16, 2017 by MaryO

 

The surgical removal of two-thirds of the pituitary gland is associated with high initial remission rates and low operative morbidity in patients with suspected Cushing’s disease, when no tumor is found on the gland during surgical exploration.

Cushing’s disease (CD) is caused by increased levels of glucocoticosteroids, such as adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), circulating in the blood.

In nearly 70 percent of cases this happens as a result of benign tumors on the pituitary gland, which produce excess ACTH. In these patients, the most effective and first-line treatment is surgical removal of the pituitary gland tumor.

During the diagnostic stage, clinicians use several methods to identify and localize the source of excessive ACTH. But these methods can fail, and the presence of a tumor in the pituitary is not always confirmed. If the tumor remains unidentified during surgical exploration, it falls to the surgeon’s discretion about how to manage their patients.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine provided an overview of their experience on the management of patients with presumed Cushing’s disease who underwent surgical treatment.

The study, “Negative surgical exploration in patients with Cushing’s disease: benefit of two-thirds gland resection on remission rate and a review of the literature,” was published in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

“The diagnosis and treatment of CD is one of the most challenging entities that pituitary neurosurgeons, endocrinologists, and pathologists face,” the researchers wrote. “The ability to make a correct diagnosis and deliver a high likelihood of remission after surgery relies heavily on the performance of a meticulous workup and rational surgical strategy.”

The team retrospectively analyzed all cases that had been referred to the Department of Neurosurgery of CU School of Medicine between 1989 and 2011 for a potential ACTH-secreting pituitary tumor.

During this period, 161 cases of Cushing’s patients who underwent surgical tumor resection were reported. In 22 patients, the surgeon was unable to detect a tumor.

In these cases the surgical team decided to remove two-thirds of the gland, with resection of the lateral and inferior portions of the pituitary. All 22 patients were treated using a consistent technique performed by a single surgeon.

Posterior tissue analysis confirmed that six of these patients had pituitary ACTH-secreting tumors. In the remaining 16 patients, no tumor was identified. In three patients the team believed that overproduction of ACTH could be due to an overgrowth of ACTH-secreting cells rather than expansion.

The team believes that these findings underscore the difficulty of accurately diagnosing very small pituitary tumors pre- and post-operatively.

The 22 patients were followed for a mean time of 98.9 months, or 8.2 years. No remissions were observed in the six patients who had ACTH-secreting tumors or in 12 of the remaining patients. Blood analysis in follow-up exams confirmed these patients had normal levels of glucocoticosteroids.

Four patients continued to show persistent elevated amounts of ACTH. Additional clinical evaluations revealed that two patients had ACTH-secreting lung tumors, and one patient was suspected of having an ACTH-secreting tumor on a brain region close to the pituitary. There was one case where the clinical team was unable to identify the origin of elevated ACTH.

Only three patients required hormone replacement after the two-thirds gland removal to overcome a newly detected hormone deficit. The approach used by the surgical team was, overall, found to be safe with no severe side effects reported.

“Currently, when the neurosurgeon is faced with the inability to identify a discrete adenoma intraoperatively, there is little uniformity in the literature as to how to proceed,” the team wrote. “We believe this [pituitary resection] approach will be useful to help guide surgeons in the operative treatment of this particularly difficult group of patients.”

From https://cushingsdiseasenews.com/2017/12/14/pituitary-gland-resection-may-help-presumed-cushings-disease-patients/

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Patients Undergoing Adrenalectomy Should Receive Steroid Substitutive Therapy

Posted on December 14, 2017 by MaryO

All patients who undergo removal of one adrenal gland due to Cushing’s syndrome (CS) or adrenal incidentaloma (AI, adrenal tumors discovered incidentally) should receive a steroid substitutive therapy, a new study shows.

The study, “Predictability of hypoadrenalism occurrence and duration after adrenalectomy for ACTH‐independent hypercortisolism,” was published in the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation.

CS is a rare disease, but subclinical hypercortisolism, an asymptomatic condition characterized by mild cortisol excess, has a much higher prevalence. In fact, subclinical hypercortisolism, is present in up to 20 percent of patients with AI.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) is composed of the hypothalamus, which releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) that acts on the pituitary to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), that in turn acts on the adrenal gland to release cortisol.

To avoid excess cortisol production, high cortisol levels tell the hypothalamus and the pituitary to stop producing CRH and ACTH, respectively. Therefore, as CS and AI are characterized by high levels of cortisol, there is suppression of the HPA axis.

As the adrenal gland is responsible for the production of cortisol, patients might need steroid substitutive therapy after surgical removal of AI. Indeed, because of HPA axis suppression, some patients have low cortisol levels after such surgeries – clinically known as post-surgical hypocortisolism (PSH), which can be damaging to the patient.

While some researchers suggest that steroid replacement therapy should be given only to some patients, others recommend it should be given to all who undergo adrenalectomy (surgical removal of the adrenal gland).

Some studies have shown that the severity of hypercortisolism, as well as the degree of HPA axis suppression and treatment with ketoconazole pre-surgery in CS patients, are associated with a longer duration of PSH.

Until now, however, there have been only a few studies to guide in predicting the occurrence and duration of PSH. Therefore, researchers conducted a study to determine whether HPA axis activity, determined by levels of ACTH and cortisol, could predict the occurrence and duration of PSH in patients who undergo an adrenalectomy.

Researchers studied 80 patients who underwent adrenalectomy for either CS or AI. Prior to the surgery, researchers measured levels of ACTH, urinary free cortisol (UFC), and serum cortisol after 1 mg dexamethasone suppression test (1 mg-DST).

After the surgery, all patients were placed on steroid replacement therapy and PSH was determined after two months. For those with PSH, levels of cortisol were determined every six months for at least four years.

Results showed that PSH occurred in 82.4 percent of CS patients and 46 percent of AI patients. PSH lasted for longer than 18 months in 50 percent of CS and 30 percent of AI patients. Furthermore, it lasted longer than 36 months for 35.7 percent of CS patients.

In all patients, PSH was predicted by pre-surgery cortisol levels after the 1 mg-DST, but with less than 70 percent accuracy.

In AI patients, a shorter-than-12-month duration of PSH was not predicted by any HPA parameter, but was significantly predicted by an absence of pre-surgery diagnosis of subclinical hypercortisolism.

So, this study did not find any parameters that could significantly predict with high sensitivity and specificity the development or duration of PSH in all patients undergoing adrenalectomy.

Consequently, the authors concluded that “the PSH occurrence and its duration are hardly predictable before surgery. All patients undergoing unilateral adrenalectomy should receive a steroid substitutive therapy.”

From https://cushingsdiseasenews.com/2017/12/08/therapy-cushings-patients-adrenalectomy/

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ACTH-producing Lung Tumors Hard to Detect, But May Be Cured with Surgery

Posted on December 13, 2017 by MaryO

Ectopic Cushing’s syndrome can be challenging to diagnose, especially when it comes identifying the problem source. But appropriate hormone management protocols, used in combination with advanced imaging methods, may help physicians identify ectopic ACTH-producing tumors.

The findings in a case report of a young man with ectopic Cushing’s syndrome were published in the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports, under the title “Case report: Ectopic Cushing’s syndrome in a young male with hidden lung carcinoid tumor.”

Cushing’s syndrome is caused by high amounts of glucocoticosteroids in the blood. The most common cause is a malfunction of the glands that produce these hormones. In some cases, however, the disease may be caused by tumors elsewhere in the body that have the ability to produce adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH).

In half of all Cushing’s patients, ectopic ACTH is produced by small lung cell carcinomas or lung carcinoids (a type of slow-growing lung cancer). But some tumors in the thymus and pancreas also have been found to produce ACTH.

Researchers at Damascus University Hospital in Syria presented the case of a 26-year-old man who had ectopic Cushing’s syndrome due to lung carcinoids.

The patient presented with increased appetite and rapid weight gain for more than a year. These were associated with headache, fatigue, proximal muscle weakness, and easy bruising. He had no family history of hormonal disorder.

Based on the initial physical and symptom evaluation, the clinical team suspected Cushing’s syndrome. Blood analysis revealed high levels of cortisol and ACTH hormones, which supported the diagnosis.

Administration of dexamethasone, a treatment used to inhibit the production of glucocoticosteroids by the pituitary gland, reduced cortisol levels within normal range, but not ACTH levels. This led to the diagnosis of ectopic Cushing’s syndrome.

The next step was to identify the tumor causing the syndrome. The team conducted imaging studies of the brain, chest, and abdomen, but found no tumor.

Because ectopic ACTH is commonly produced by lung cancers, the team then analyzed the patient’s lungs. Again, they failed to detect a tumor.

The patient was discharged with prescription of 200 mg of Nizoral (ketoconazole) once-daily, calcium, and vitamin D. After three months of treatment, he remained stable, with no evidence of symptom improvement.

At this point, the team decided to surgically remove both adrenal glands in an attempt to reduce the hormone levels. Treatment with prednisolone 5 mg and fludrocortisone 0.1 mg once daily was initiated, along with calcium and vitamin D.

Eighteen months later, the patient’s condition worsened and he required hospitalization.

Imaging tests targeting the neck, chest, and abdomen were conducted again. This time, physicians detected a 2 cm mass in the middle lobe of the right lung, which was removed surgically. Detailed analysis of the small tumor confirmed that it was the source of the excessive ACTH.

“ACTH secreting tumors can be very hard to detect,” the researchers stated. “Initial failed localization is common in ectopic ACTH syndrome and it is usually due to carcinoid.”

Cases where the ectopic ACTH production is caused by a carcinoid tumor can be challenging to diagnose because tumors are small and relatively slow-growing. Imaging data is often hard to analyze and the tumors can be confused with pulmonary vessels, the researchers explained.

“In such cases we should first aim to lower blood cortisol medically or through bilateral adrenalectomy to avoid Cushing’s complications,” which should then “be followed up through imaging studies (CT, MRI, scintigraphy or PET) to detect the tumor and resect it, which is the definitive treatment of these patients,” the researchers concluded.

From https://cushingsdiseasenews.com/2017/12/12/case-report-ectopic-acth-producing-lung-tumors-can-hard-detect/

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