Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the most important cause of mortality in acromegaly patients. Noninvasive assessment of aortic stiffness which can be used as an predictor of atherosclerosis, may be of benefit in acromegaly patients for early diagnosis of CVD. We evaluated the aortic elasticity parameters of acromegalic patients in remission and compared with healthy controls.

Methods and results: Study subjects consisted of 20 patients with acromegaly in remission (12 females, 8 males, mean age 43.7±11.5 years) and 20 age-matched controls (12 females, 8 males, mean age 38.7±6.4 years). Parameters of aortic elasticity such as aortic strain, aortic dispensability and stiffness index beta were measured by echocardiography and calculated by using standard formulas. Although aortic strain rate was lower in acromegaly group than control subjects it was not statistically different (13.1±7.0 vs 16.6±4.1, P=0.064). However it was found that aortic stiffness beta index was significantly higher and dispensability was significantly lower in acromegaly patients compared to control subjects (respectively; 4.0 (1.2–12.3) vs 2.6 (1.4–5.8), P=0.009 and 0.5 (0.2–1.9) vs 0.8 (0.4–1.5), P=0.006). Systolic and diastolic blood pressure, diameters of aort measured in systole and diastole, total and LDL cholesterol levels were found to be effective independent variants contributing to aortic stiffness.

Conclusion: The assessment of aortic stiffness by echocardiography in terms of parameters mentioned above, were found to be statistically different in patients with acromegaly who were in remission. According to these results conducting to increased aortic stiffness, it can be suggested that cardiovascular risk increased in acromegaly patients and ongoing even in remission period.