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Endocrine Abstracts (2015) 37 EP773 | DOI: 10.1530/endoabs.37.EP773

1Department of Endocrinology, Pontevedra University Hospital, Pontevedra, Spain; 2Department of Endocrinology, Vigo University Hospital, Vigo, Spain; 3Centre for Biomedical Research (CINBIO), University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain.


Acromegaloidisms are usually reported as isolated cases that are not well characterised clinically. Indeed, most such cases were reported several decades ago, part of the reason why our knowledge about this entity is scarce. By contrast, clinical situations suggestive of acromegaly are not so infrequent, in which basal GH and IGF1 levels lie within a normal range, the GH responses to OGTT challenge are conserved and there is no radiological (MRI) evidence of hypothalamic-pituitary masses. These unclassified patients are considered as individuals with acromegaloidism. We made a systematic study of a cohort of 15 such individuals, comparing them to cases of acromegaly and to healthy controls in a prospective follow-up protocol. The subjects in each group were matched by gender, age and BMI, and they were all submitted to current diagnostic tests for acromegaly, including conventional blood and biochemical tests, oral glucose overload and MRI exploration. In addition, the subjects were evaluated using a previously validated clinical activity scale (ACA index), and they were submitted to ultrasonography (USG) exploration of the carpal tunnel, non-dominant knee cartilage and the thyroid gland. The subjects with acromegaloidism obtained similar ACA scores to acromegaly patients and USG explorations revealed similar alterations to those in acromegaly subjects. Although spontaneously remitting acromegaly is thought to be an unlikely cause of acromegaloidism, periodic follow-up of these subjects is recommended and we provide here a systematic protocol to characterise such acromegaloidism.

Disclosure: This work was supported by funds from Xunta de Galicia (ref. IN845B-2010/148).

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