Endocrine Abstracts

Literary data concerning quality of life in adult patients with classical form of 21 hydroxylase deficiency (21 CAH) are sparse and discrepant. Our aim thus was to explore quality of life in a group of young adults with 21CAH attending regularly tertiary reference care centre. We used WHOQuOL Bref questionnaire and we administered it to 45 21 CAH patients of age 28.6 ± 8 yrs and we compared the results with the data from 111 age matched controls from healthy Czech population. 21 CAH have lower score in the domain of physical health (15.2 ± 2.47, vs 16.14 ± 2.4; P = 0.036) and in the domain environment (15 ± 2.16, vs 13.36 ± 2.09; P = 0.001). We did not find any correlation between biochemical results (lipids, 17 OH progesterone, androstendion, testosteron) or between BMI and blood pressure and the respective domains of the questionnaire. We did not find any correlation between total dose of used glucocorticoids /hydrocortisone equivalent/and any domain in the questionnaire. Concerning comparison of different steroids used for the treatment, the patients treated with prednison have higher scores in domains of physical health í( 16.2 ± 1.7 vs 14.5 ± 2.3 for hydrocortison, P = 0.038, and 13.6 ± 2.4 for dexametason, P = 0.029) and environment (16 ± 1.6 vs 14.1 ± 2.1 for hydrocortison, P = 0.01 and 13.1 ± 2.0 for dexametason, P = 0.006). We conclude that young adult 21 CAH patients still have worse quality.of life in the domain concerning physical health than their healthy peers. On the contrary, they have higher quality of life in the domain enviroment, which could be explained by good family support. The best scores of patients treated with prednison could be explained probably by more convenient dose schedule than that for hydrocortison. Supported by Ministry of Health, Czech Republic - conceptual development of research organization (Institute of Endocrinology - EÚ, 00023761)’