Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: There is only few data on metabolic syndrome occurrence in young patients with childhood-onset GH deficiency (CO-GHD), especially its partial form.

Aim: The aim of this study was the assessment of the metabolic syndrome criteria (according to IDF 2007) occurrence in adolescents and young adults with CO-GHD and evaluation of their correlations with the degree of GH/IGF-1 axis function impairment.

Subjects and methods: The study was performed in a group of total 122 subjects aged 16–25 years. Based on current peak serum GH concentrations in insulin tolerance test (ITT) patients were qualified for one of the following groups: i) severe GH deficiency (GHD; peak GH <5.0 ng/ml, n=26), ii) partial GHD (PGHD; peak GH 5.0–10.0 ng/ml, n=22), iii) normal GH secretion (NGH; peak GH >10.0 ng/ml, n=28), iv) healthy subjects (H; n=46). Following examinations were performed: i) anthropometric measurements (body mass, height, hip and waist circumference), ii) blood pressure iii) serum glucose, insulin, total, HDL and LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, IGF1, iv) HOMA-IR was calculated.

Results: WHR was significantly (P<0.01) higher in GHD (0.82) as well as in PGHD (0.78) in comparison with NGH (0.73) and H (0.73) subjects. We observed significantly elevated (P<0.05) total and LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides and hsCRP in GH, but not in PGHD compared to NGH or H groups. There were no differences in fasting glucose, insulin and HOMA-IR values between the examined subjects. Metabolic syndrome has been diagnosed in four NGH patients (15.4%). Significant (P<0.05) negative correlations between the peak ITT GH concentrations and hsCRP (r=−0.51), total (r=−0.43) and LDL-cholesterol (r=−0.38) and triglycerides (r=−0.28) were observed. Serum IGF1 correlated negatively with hsCRP (r=−0.44), glucose (r=−0.43) and HOMA-IR (r=−0.31) and positively with insulin (r=0.29).

Conclusion: i) Metabolic syndrome is significantly more frequent in adolescents and adults with GHD. ii) Partial CO-GHD is not associated with metabolic disturbances in our patients.