Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Diabetes mellitus is one of the serious acromegaly complication.

As well known, glycemia influences growth hormone (GH) secretion. From this point of view, it is interesting to investigate feature peculiarity of GH and Insulin like Growth Factor 1 (IFG-1) secretion when acromegaly is coupled with diabetes mellitus.

Aim: Of this study was to investigate diabetes mellitus influence on GH and IGF-1 levels in acromegalic patients.

Material and methods: patients with no treated acromegaly were studied. 13 of them had diabetes mellitus. Median of acromegalic patients age with DM was 58.0 (57.0–62.5) years and without DM was 48.0 (35.0–55.0) years (P<0.05). GH and IGF-1 serum levels were measured in fasting state.

Results: Relationships between fasting glucose and GH levels were negative and enough strong (r=−0.5, P<0.05). GH serum level in acromegalic patients without DM was more than twice higher than in DM patients: 39.7 (21.7–49.9) mME/l vs 16.2 (6.3–32.6) mME/l, (P<0.05). Accordingly, the percent of increase IGF-1 level in acromegaly patients without DM was significantly higher than in patients with diabetes (60.1 (5.17–67.8)% and 46.5 (28.9–52.4)%, (P<0.05)).

Conclusion: Fasting hyperglycemia suppresses GH and, correspondently, IGF-1 secretion.