Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The growth promoting effects of GH and IGF1 has lead to increasing number of cancer surveillence studies in acromegaly so far. We herein aimed to present the prevalance of cancer in acromegaly patients followed in our institution.

Patients and design: We retrospectively analyzed medical records of 151 patients with acromegaly (83 females) followed in our department from 2001 to 2012.

Results: Overall, cancer was detected in 19 (12.6%) patients. Thyroid carcinoma was the most common cancer (n=9 (5.9%)) and papillary thyroid cancer was the leading type (n=7 (4.6%)). Besides, one patient had medullary and another one had synchronous papillary and medullary thyroid cancer. Lung cancer was found in two patients and rignet-ring-cell colon carcinoma in one, endometrium cancer in one, malignant melanoma in one and myelodysplastic syndrome in one patient. In addition, four patients had multiple endocrine neoplasia-type 1. Frequency of cancer among both sexes were not significantly different (female: 12/83 (14.4%), male: 7/68 (10.2%), P>0.05). Cancer was detected in 13 patients after, in four patients simultaneously and in three patients before the diagnosis of acromegaly. There were no significant differences in age of onset of acromegaly or cancer, disease duration, hormone levels and metabolic parameters among the patients with and without cancer. In logistic regression model, neither disease duration nor hormonal activity were associated with malignancy risk.

Conclusion: In parallel with most of the reports, thyroid cancer was the most common cancer in our acromegaly patient group. Although we could not demonstrate an association of disease activity with cancer, high hormone levels with possible mitogenic activity might be a causative or accelarating factor in carcinogenesis.