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Open access

Jakub Supronik, Małgorzata Szelachowska, Adam Kretowski, and Katarzyna Siewko

Graves’ orbitopathy (GO) is a potentially sight-threatening and disfiguring, extrathyroidal manifestation of Graves’ disease. It often impairs patients’ quality of life, causing severe social and psychological sequelae. Intravenous glucocorticosteroids is currently the mainstay of therapy, but the efficacy is often underwhelming and recurrence rate is high. For many years, clinicians have been searching for new methods of treatment. Rituximab (RTX) is a chimeric monoclonal antibody targeted against CD20 which is a surface antigen present on B cells. It is frequently used to treat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, rheumatoid arthritis, or various types of vasculitis. Numerous clinical trials employing RTX in the treatment of GO have shown promising results. RTX is currently considered to be a valid second-line treatment option in patients unresponsive to previous interventions or in disease reactivation. This review summarizes the available literature on this topic, including two largest, randomized, controlled studies. Potential benefits, as well as the limitations of RTX therapy, are discussed.

Open access

Agnieszka Adamska, Vitalii Ulychnyi, Katarzyna Siewko, Anna Popławska-Kita, Małgorzata Szelachowska, Marcin Adamski, Angelika Buczyńska, and Adam Jacek Krętowski

Cardiovascular risk factors could be present in mild adrenal autonomous cortisol secretion (MACS). However, the most frequent cardiovascular risk factors in MACS have not been established. The aim of the presseent study was to analyse the difference in cardiovascular risk factors in patients with MACS in comparison to those with non-functioning adrenal tumour (NFAT). A total of 295 patients with adrenal incidentaloma were included in this retrospective study. We divided our group into those who showed suppression in 1 mg overnight dexamethasone suppression test (DST) (NFAT) (serum cortisol level ≤1.8 μg/dL) and those who did not show suppression in the DST (MACS) (serum concentration of cortisol > 1.8 μg/dL and ≤5 μg/dL). In the studied groups, we analysed the presence of cardiovascular risk factors, such as obesity, prediabetes, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular events. In our study, 18.9% of patients were defined as MACS. Importantly, T2DM was diagnosed in 41% of MACS vs 23% of NFAT (P < 0.01) and higher frequency of occurrence of hyperlipidaemia in NFAT (72.4%) vs MACS (53.6%) (P = 0.01) was observed. We did not observed differences in the frequency of obesity, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, prediabetes, atrial fibrillation, stroke, ST and non-ST elevation myocardial infarction and coronary angioplasty between patients with MACS and NFAT (all P > 0.05; respectively). In MACS, T2DM is more prevalent than in NFAT; hyperlipidaemia is more prevalent in NFAT. Accordingly, no differences were found in the incidence of obesity, hypertension, prediabetes, chronic kidney disease between studied groups as well as cardiovascular events.