Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Acromegaly causes hyperlipidemia and glucose metabolism disturbances what finally results in increased mortality. Correctin of those lipid and glucose disturbances during treatment with long-acting somatostatin analogues was examinated in this study.

Material and methods: Eleven patients (9 women and 2 men) with active acromegaly and macroadenoma diagnosed at our Department in the years 2008–2011 underwent monitoring of lipids and glucose levels before and during one-year treatment.

Results: The therapy with long-acting somatostatin analogues leaded to statistically significant reduction of GH and IGF1 level (P=0.00585; P=0.0094 respectively). Normoglycaemia occured in 45.45% of patients, diabetes mellitus was found in 9.09% impaired fasting glucose in 27.27% and impaired glucose tolerance in 18.18% before treatment. There was not statistically significant reduction of glucose level during therapy. The mean fasting glucose concentration and the level in 120 min of glucose test tolerance before treatment were 99.1±20.67 and 107.37±44.84 respectively and after therapy the levels were 94.43±18.62 and 87.31±22.41 respectively. There was observed impaired glucose tolerance in 9.09% of patients and normoglycaemia existed in 54.56% after treatment. According to the problems with lipid metabolism the lipid profile shows higher levels of total cholesterol in 72.72% of the patients, triglycerides in 27.27% and LDL-cholesterol in 90.09% with no statistically significant reduction of these parameters (P=0.33, P=0.25, P=0.624 respectively). Before and after therapy there were found no correlations between patient’s age, GH level and fasting plasma glucose, total cholesterol, triglycerides. There were only correlations between the age and HDL-cholesterol level (P=0.022) and LDL-cholesterol and GH level before the treatment (P=0.0045).

Conclusions: The treatment with somatostatin analogues does not lead to improvement of total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides and does not help to regulate glucose level in acromegalic patients.

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.