The role of steroid metabolome analysis for the diagnosis and follow-up of adrenocortical tumours.

The role of steroid metabolome analysis for the diagnosis and follow-up of adrenocortical tumours. Minerva Endocrinol. 2018 Jun 14;: Authors: Chortis V Abstract The diagnostic work up of adrenal tumours, often incidentally discovered, has emerged as an ever-increasing diagnostic problem for clinical endocrinologists. No imaging modality has sufficiently high sensitivity and specificity at differentiating benign from malignant adrenal lesions. It has long been observed that adrenocortical carcinomas (ACCs) present an immature pattern of steroidogenesis, dominated by steroid hormone precursors. Modern mass spectrometry-based assays can generate multi-steroid metabolite profiles in urine collections, which can detect differences between ACCs and benign adrenocortical adenomas (ACAs). This review summarizes the promising results of studies which have applied steroid metabolite profiling in biological fluids as a novel diagnostic tool for patients with adrenal tumours, as well as the challenges and limitations of this approach. It also discusses the potential role of steroid profiling as a surveillance biochemical tool to detect recurrence in patients who have undergone resection of an ACC. PMID: 29905434 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Minerva Endocrinologica - Category: Endocrinology Tags: Minerva Endocrinol Source Type: research