Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Acromegaly is characterized by hormonal excess of GH and IGF-1, however many patients suffer from hypopituitarism as a result from either disease or treatment. Quality of Life (QoL) is known to be reduced both in acromegaly, with mixed results on the role of biochemical control herein, and hypopituitarism. Studies report the level of surgery-induced hypopituitarism after acromegaly at 12.79% (CI 9.88–16.00%). Treatment of acromegaly aimed at normalization of h...

Introduction: Improvement of health related quality of life (QoL) is one of the main goals defined by the WHO and besides reduction of mortality and morbidity an important objective for health outcomes. In chronic endocrine diseases, QoL often remains impaired despite cure or remission of the disease. In quantitative analyses, factors such as age, gender, BMI and depression, are associated with reduced QoL. However, aspects of social interaction and more complex individual con...

Objective: Sexual orientation in males and females is considered to be determined in early life and to be virtually unchangeable in the course of adulthood. In contrast some transsexuals report a change in their sexual orientation most overt following sex reassignment procedures. The reason for this phenomenon is unknown.Methods: We asked 106 transsexual (66 MtF and 40 FtM) patients from our endocrine outpatient clinic to complete a questionnaire, retros...

Objective: To examine whether prolactinoma patients have an altered personality profile.Methods: In this cross-sectional study 84 prolactinoma patients were enrolled. As reference groups, we compared 58 patients with non-functioning pituitary adenomas and secondly 168 age and gender matched healthy control subjects. Personality traits were measured with the standardized Eysenck (EPQ) and Cloninger personality (TPQ) questionnaires.R...

Introduction: Treatment with dopamine agonists in patients with PRL adenomas has been associated with weight loss in short-term studies. However, long-term studies on weight changes are lacking. Taq1A is a restriction fragment length polymorphism considered as a gene marker for the D2DR gene. The presence of at least one A1 allele is linked to reduced brain dopaminergic activity due to reduced receptor binding and lower density of the dopamine two receptor.<p clas...

Introduction: SUB:Pituitary – Clinical (Generously supported by IPSEN)It is still unclear whether obesity in craniopharyngioma (CP) is caused by disorders in food regulation or by changes in mood or activity due to depression or sleepiness leading to a decrease in energy consumption. We compared CP to patients with non-functioning pituitary adenoma (NFPA) by using standardized questionnaires to clarify this question.Methods: We compared 31 ...

Objectives: Our aim was to assess health-related quality of life in patients with Cushing’s disease (CD) and patients with non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFPA).Methods: We assessed patients with CD and with NFPA treated at our outpatient units. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) was assessed with the SF-36, a widely used generic measure of health status and the CushingQoL, a newly developed disease generated questionnaire to evaluate HRQoL ...

Introduction: Discontinuation of GH therapy in patients with COGHD after attainment of final height has been associated with impaired somatic development, altered peak bone mass and cardiovascular risk factors. A well-managed transition of care between paediatric and adult health services can improve the clinical and social outcomes in adolescents with GHD.Objective: To assess the quality of the transfer between children and adult medical services in our...

Objectives: It is known that patients with pituitary adenomas, especially acromegaly, frequently suffer from pain syndromes such as headache and arthralgia. Whether pain exists and to what extent in Cushing’s disease (CD), reflecting chronic cortisol excess, is not clear. We hypothesized that pain patterns should be also altered and investigated pain laterisation, clinical characteristics, phenotypes as well as underlying predictors.Methods: In a cr...

Background: Low testosterone levels in men occur with increasing age and are associated with increased morbidity, particularly metabolic syndrome, and mortality. As the prevalence of hypogonadal testosterone levels has not been assessed in the primary care setting in Europe, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of low testosterone levels in this setting, and the patient characteristics and comorbidities associated with it.Methods: We measured testoster...