Endocrine Abstracts

Context: Epidemiological data is important to correctly quantify the extent of disease and needed health care resources. There are no reports on both incidence and prevalence rates for pituitary adenomas (PAs) together in the same population.

Objective: The objective of the study was to establish the prevalence and incidence of pituitary adenomas with in-depth analysis of their various subtypes in a well defined population.

Design: This was a restrospective cross-sectional analysis of PA patients diagnosed prior to 31 July 2011 for prevalence estimates and those diagnosed between July 2000 and July 2011 for estimating incidence figures.

Methods: Prevalence rates /100 000 and standardised incidence ratios (SIR)/100 000/year were worked out.

Results: The prevalence rates for PAs overall was 75.7/100 000, for prolactinomas it was 35.0/100 000, for nonfunctioning PA 25.9/100 000 and for GH-secreting PAs it was 12.5/100 000. The SIR for PAs overall was 4.27/100 000 per year, for prolactinomas it was 2.05/100 000 per year, for nonfunctioning PA 1.79/100 000 per year and for GH-secreting PAs it was 0.31/100 000 per year. The overall prevalence for macroadenomas was 32.8/100 000 and SIR was 1.49/100 000 per year. The prevalence rate in males for PAs overall was 46.3/100 000 and SIR was 2.08/100 000 per year. For females the prevalence rate for PAs overall was 104.8/100 000 and SIR was 6.58/100 000 per year. Females had a lower proportion of macroadenomas than males (29.5 vs 75.0%; P<0.001) and macroadenomas tended to present at a later age compared to microadenomas (48 vs 34.5; P<0.001). The highest SIR was reached in the 30–39 age group at 7.42/100 000 per year. Those tumours presenting with apoplexy had a prevalence rate of 2.87/100 000 and a SIR of 0.15/100 000 per year.

Conclusion: This study brings together uptodate prevalence and incidence figures which complement each other. The quoted figures help to further quantify the extent of disease burden that PAs bear on health care resources.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.