Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Involvement of growth hormone in the maturation and function of the ovary is proved by a series of clinical observations.

Scope: Assessing serum levels of IGF1 as a marker of GH activity correlated to age of onset of menarche and menopause.

Method: The study groups consisted of 41 patients (group 1) with GH deficiency diagnosed before the age of 8 years and a group of 18 adult patients with pituitary dwarfism who had early menopause (group 2).

Results: In group 1, baseline IGF1 was low for 23 patients and normal in basal conditions for 18 patients. After treatment with recombinant GH, the IGF1 value led to ‘normal’ in 18 patients in group 1. Age of onset of menarche has been 17±2.84 years in group 1 and 15±2.2 years for group 2. For patients with low IGF1 after GH substitution treatment, menarche was installed at age of 19.3±1.16 years. A total of 11 patients were treated with recombinant GH in prepubertal period. IGF1 value was consistently lower in 14 patients, the remaining 4 patients IGF1 values were within normal limits.

Conclusions: IGF1 deficient values are involved in late maturation of ovarian function in its early exhaustion. Dosage IGF1 could be considered as a predictive factor for ovarian disorders in this population. It remains to note that treatment with recombinant GH in adulthood may extend ovarian activity.