ECEESPE2025 ePoster Presentations Adrenal and Cardiovascular Endocrinology (170 abstracts)
1Clinic for Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, University Clinical Centre of Serbia, National Centre for Infertility and Endocrinology of Gender, Belgrade, Serbia; 2The University of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering, Belgrade, Serbia
JOINT1229
Introduction: Current guidelines for managing adrenal incidentalomas (AI) do not recommend long-term follow-up for patients with non-functioning adrenal incidentalomas (NAI) unless in case of significant changes in comorbidities potentially attributed to mild autonomous cortisol secretion (MACS).
Aim: This study aimed to assess the long-term development of cardiometabolic risk factors in patients with AI and evaluate the need for follow-up.
Methods: In this single-center prospective cohort study, 88 patients with AI (70 females [79.5%], 18 males [20.5%]) underwent clinical, biochemical, and imaging evaluations at baseline and final follow-up (median 55 months, IQR 4780). Based on the result of 1 mg dexamethasone suppression test at baseline, patients were stratified into NAI (1 mg dexamethasone suppression test [1 mg DST] cortisol ≤50 nmol/l) or MACS (1 mg DST cortisol >50 nmol/l).
Results: At the final follow-up, patients with MACS demonstrated a significant increase in body mass index (BMI) (27.1 vs. 27.8 kg/m², P = 0.03), a higher incidence of bilateral tumors (51.2% vs. 34%, P = 0.016), increase in antihypertensive medication count (P < 0.001), and a nonsignificant trend toward higher dyslipidemia rates (66% vs. 41%, P = 0.06). In contrast, NAI patients exhibited a significant increase only in antihypertensive medication count (P < 0.001). In the univariate linear regression model, significant predictors for antihypertensive medication count in NAI were baseline BMI (B = 0.08, 95% CI [0.0050.166], P= 0.04), follow-up duration (B = 0.01, 95% CI [0.0040.026], P = 0.01), and baseline antihypertensive medication count (B = 0.85, 95% CI [0.5481.146], P < 0.001). In multivariate regression, follow-up duration (B = 0.01, 95% CI [0.0010.018], P = 0.04), and baseline antihypertensive medication count (B = 0.73, 95% CI [0.4061.056], P = 0.01) remained significant. Notably, 19.1% (9/47) of NAI patients progressed to MACS during follow-up.
Conclusions: Although NAI patients did not exhibit significant cardiometabolic risk progression over a median follow-up of 4.6 years, nearly 20% developed MACS. These findings suggest that patients with NAI should undergo at least one reassessment for MACS within a 4-year period to guide clinical management.