Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Patients with hypoparathyroidism (hypoPT) suffer from a number of complaints and reduced quality of life (QoL) besides having serum values for disease-specific parameters in the target range. To be able to quantify symptoms in hypoPT patients we lately developed a disease-specific questionnaire, the Hypoparathyroidism patient questionnaire with 28 items (HPQ28). The aim of this study was to present normative values for the HPQ28.

Methods: A representative sample of the German general population (n=2509) was tested with the HPQ28. The HPQ28 consists of five scales and three single items with 28 items in total. The five scales indicate different areas of complaints: Pain and cramps (PaC) including 5 items, neurovegetative symptoms (NVS) including 5 items, loss of vitality (Vit) including 6 items, depression and anxiety (DaA) including 5 items, gastro-intestinal symptoms (GIS) including 2 items and two control items for depression. Three items were not attributable to any of the five scales.

Results: Mean age of the healthy population sample was 50 ±18 years. Men (49%) and women (51%) were equally distributed. To investigate influence of age and gender on symptoms and QoL participants were organized into seven age classes. All scales and single items, except for GiS, were affected by age in male and females (P<0.001). In addition, all scales and single items were affected by gender (P<0.001). Hence, in the general German population females report highly significant more complaints (P<0.001) on every scale and single item of the HPQ28 compared to men. Symptoms and complaints also increase in older subjects. Regression analyses proved a linear trend in the different scores. Percentile rank norms are given for all scores and items.

Conclusion: Analysis in the German population sample revealed gender and age dependency of scores and items of the HPQ28. The regression coefficients now allow the calculation of expected mean scores for each age and gender distribution of any sample of patients.