Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Patients with craniopharyngeoma often have disturbances of the hypothalamic–pituitary axis and serious comorbidities as obesity. We hypothesized, that the pattern of hormones regulating the nutritional status is worsened in adult patients with craniopharyngioma (CP) compared to adult patients with non-functioning pituitary adenoma (NFPA).

Methods: We included 33 patients with CP (m=16, f=17, median age: 48 years (26–77)) and 33 patients with NFPA (m=24, f=9, median age: 66 years (44–80)) in the study. The prevalence of hormonal pituitary insufficiencies of adenohypophysis did not differ significantly between groups. We measured fasting glucose, insulin, leptin, serum total ghrelin, PYY and CCK. Furthermore, total body fat mass (=FM) was determined by dual-X-ray-absorptiometry.

Results: Significantly more patients with CP had diabetes mellitus (n=7 vs n=1, P=0.027). Patients with CP had significantly higher FM than patients with NFPA (38.48% (20.90–54.90) vs 32.48% (17.90–53.70), P=0.017). Moreover, glucose levels (82.5 mg/dl (68–120) vs 73.5 mg/dl (54–112), P=0.004) and leptin levels (15.9 μg/l (1.7–139.5) vs 9.3 μg/l (0.7–45.5), P=0.007) were significantly higher in CP than in NFPA. But insulin, ghrelin, PYY and CCK did not differ significantly between the two groups. When groups were divided by gender, ghrelin levels were significantly lower in female CP (132 ng/l (69–807) vs 287 ng/l (103–488), P=0.003).

Conclusion: Patients with craniopharyngioma have more metabolic complications including higher leptin levels and lower ghrelin levels in females than patients with NFPA. This might be caused by hypothalamic damage and not by pituitary insuffciency. Interestingly, the pattern of other food intake regulating hormones seems not be disturbed.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This work was supported, however funding details unavailable.