Objective: Severity classifications are essential for many diseases to prioritize patient management tasks such as diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up. Primary aldosteronism (PA), a common cause of secondary hypertension, lacks a standardized severity scale despite generally requiring invasive diagnostics like adrenal venous sampling (AVS). This study aimed to develop a global expert consensus-based classification for PA severity to improve clinical decision-making. Methods: A panel of 45 international experts from 40 centers across four continents used the Delphi method to create a consensus severity classification for PA. This classification was then applied retrospectively to 2593 PA patients from 26 centers to assess its association with the disease subtype. Results: After four rounds, the Primary Aldosteronism Severity Classification (PASC), which integrates biochemical and clinical parameters including serum potassium, blood pressure, and basal plasma aldosterone concentration, was established. Primary Aldosteronism Severity Classification classifies PA into mild (3 and 4 points), moderate (5-7 points), and severe (8 and 9 points). Among the cohort from 26 centers, 13.9%, 63.0%, and 23.1% were classified as mild, moderate, and severe, respectively, aligning with lateralized subtype prevalence rates of 14.7%, 44.6%, and 72.6%. Conclusion: Primary Aldosteronism Severity Classification is a newly developed simplified, semi-quantitative classification of PA severity. The correlation between PASC and lateralized PA subtype supports its potential to provide graded recommendations of AVS prior to surgical indication in each patient.

Objective The current guidelines for the management of adrenal incidentaloma advise hormonal and radiological follow-up of patients for 2–5 years after the initial diagnosis. However, the vast majority of adrenal incidentaloma are non-functional benign cortical adenomas that require no treatment, so the routine application of the current strategies often results in a number of unnecessary biochemical and radiological investigations. The aim of this study was to analyse the clinical course of patients with adrenal incidentaloma and to provide a critical review of the current management strategy of the disease. Design and methods This was a retrospective study performed in the Croatian Referral Center for adrenal gland disorders. The study included 319 consecutive patients with adrenal incidentaloma, 174 of which were followed for at least 24 months. Results The vast majority of patients were diagnosed with benign adrenal masses, whereas in about 5% of them adrenal tumor corresponded to adrenal carcinoma or metastasis. Tumor density was found to be superior to tumor size in distinguishing benign adrenal masses from malignant tumors and pheochromocytomas. During the follow-up, no patient demonstrated a clinically significant increase in tumor size. In addition, no changes, either in metanephrines and normetanephrines or in the activity of renin–aldosterone axis, were observed during the follow-up. Six patients developed subclinical Cushing's syndrome (SCS) whereas eight patients with SCS showed biochemical remission during follow-up. Conclusion The study suggests that the risk of an adrenal mass initially diagnosed as benign and non-functional becoming malignant or hormonally active is extremely low. Therefore, the clinical management of those patients should be tailored on an individual basis in order to avoid unnecessary procedures.

Background and Importance. In the last eight years temozolomide (TMZ) has been used as the last-line treatment modality for aggressive pituitary tumors to be applied after the failure of surgery, medical therapy, and radiotherapy. The objective was to achieve a rapid control of tumor growth and hormone normalization with concurrent chemoradiotherapy in a patient with very aggressive ACTH pituitary adenoma. Clinical Presentation. We describe a patient with an aggressive ACTH-producing adenoma treated with concurrent temozolomide and radiotherapy. The patient suffered from an aggressive ACTH adenoma resistant to surgical and medical treatment. After two months of concurrent temozolomide and radiotherapy, cortisol normalization and significant tumor shrinkage were observed. After 22 months of follow-up, there is still no evidence of tumor recurrence. Conclusion. Concurrent treatment with temozolomide and irradiation appears to be highly effective in the achievement of the tumor volume control as well as in the control of ACTH secretion in aggressive ACTH adenoma.

Inflammatory bowel diseases are a group of chronic inflammatory conditions that affect gastrointestinal tract due to inapt and continuous immune activation in response to a myriad of predisposing factors (most notably genetics, environmental impact and gut microbiota composition). It has been shown that vitamin D status can also play a role in the disease pathogenesis, as its deficiency is commonly observed in two major forms of inflammatory bowel diseases - Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Mounting evidence supports the concept of intricate relationship between gut dysbiosis and vitamin D metabolism, while suboptimal levels of this vitamin have been linked to increased clinical disease relapse rates, inadequate response to drugs, as well as decreased quality of life in patients with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Consequently, the pertinent question is whether increased vitamin D supplementation and (on a population level) food fortification may bring significant benefit to the affected individuals. In this short review we discuss the synthesis, functions, status and food sources of vitamin D, appraise biotechnological facets of vitamin D status analysis and food fortification, and concentrate on novel developments in the field that describe its influence on intestinal microbiota and inflammatory bowel disease.