Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction & Background: Pituitary adenomas represent 10-25% of all intracranial tumors. Their incidence is higher between the ages of 40-60 years and less frequent in young adults. The objective of this work was to evaluate the prevalence as well as the clinical and etiological profile of pituitary adenomas in young adults.

Key words : pituitary adenoma- yount adult.

Material and methods: Retrospective descriptive study of 21 patients followed-up for pituitary adenoma whose age was less than 30 years. Data were collected from medical records and analyzed by SPSS-V21 software.

Results: Pituitary adenoma in young adults under the age of 30 represented 23% of all cases of pituitary adenoma in our series (n=21/91). The mean age at diagnosis was 24±4.9 years with a clear female predominance (61.9%). The clinical presentation was dominated by pituitary secretion syndrome in 66% of cases (n=15) followed by pituitary tumor syndrome in 23.8% of cases (n=5). Hypothalamohypophyseal MRI showed a pituitary macroadenoma in 71.1% of cases, 72% of which had an extrasellar extension associated with invasiveness in 4 patients (19% of cases), and a pituitary microadenoma was noted in 38.9% of cases. Corticotropic adenomas were reported in 42.8%, followed by prolactin adenomas in 33.3% and somatotropic adenomas in 14.3% of cases. A non-secreting pituitary adenoma was reported in only one patient, i.e. 4.7% of our series. The evaluation of the anteropituitary insufficiency showed a gonadotropic insufficiency in 28% of the cases, 30% of which was secondary to hyperprolactinemia, followed by thyroid and corticotropic insufficiency in 14.3% of the cases respectively and somatotropic insufficiency in one patient.57% of the patients benefited from a surgical treatment with the necessity of a surgical revision in only one patient presenting with a non-secreting pituitary macroadenoma invading the optic chiasma.

Discussion-Conclusion: Pituitary adenomas of the young adult is an uncommon clinical entity of pituitary adenomas. The results of our study are consistent with those of the literature which show a lower prevalence of adenomas in young adults. Mostly, they present as secreting adenomas such as the results found in our series where the most prevalent type was corticotropic adenoma.

Reference: 1 Aflorei ED, Korbonits M (2014) Epidemiology and etiopathogenesis of pituitary adenomas. J Neuro-Oncol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11060-013-1354-5. 2 Ezzat S, Asa SL, Couldwell WT, et al. The prevalence of pituitary adenomas: A systematic review. Cancer 2004;101:613–9