Endocrine Abstracts

Aim: We aimed to describe mortality for both gender in children and adults, in Growth Hormone Deficiency (GHD).

Materials and methods: Using three national registries: The Causes of Death Registry, The National Patient Registry, and The Cancer Registry, and The International Classification of Diseases as a filter, we identified a primary cohort of 9,131 patients. All had a high a priori risk of having GHD. All available hospital files (representing 90.2% of the patients) were traced, and a verification of the diagnosis of GHD was based on a combination of clinical and biochemical definitions. The final cohort was defined during the period from 1980 through 1999, where 1,823 patients had GHD. The patients were divided into childhood onset (CO) and adult onset (AO), discriminated by an age cut-off below or above 18 years at diagnosis.

We used The Central Office of Civil Registration to match the cases (by gender and age) with up to five controls. In total 8,014 controls were identified. Deaths were registered during the period 1980–2004.

Statistics: Survival analyses were performed with Kaplan-Meier and log rank techniques.

Results: Six-hundred-and-sixty-three cases and 1,700 patients were deceased. For CO and AO, mortality was higher for both genders in patients with GHD than in controls (P<0.0001). Using log rank stratified on age at diagnosis (five years intervals), there was no difference in mortality between the genders for CO and AO (P=0.57 and P=0.12 respectively).

Conclusion: We conclude mortality is increased in patients with GHD. Further analyzes are warranted to identify which causes of death are increased.