Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Acromegaly is a rare, chronic and progressive disease caused by a pituitary adenoma. Excessive secretion of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) leads to cell proliferation and differentiation, which results in changes in external appearance and causes various systemic complications. Elevated levels of GH and IGF-I are also thought to promote the development of cancer and some studies have shown that acromegaly is a disease with a high risk of developing cancer. The aim of our study was to assess the incidence of benign and malignant neoplasms among patients with acromegaly and the relationship between their prevalence and disease activity, the time of diagnosis of acromegaly and the time of occurrence of the first symptoms of this disease.

Materials and Methods: The retrospective study included a statistical analysis of the medical records of 230 patients with acromegaly treated at the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Isotope Therapy in Wroclaw (Poland) in 1990-2023 in order to estimate the incidence of neoplasms among them. Statistical analysis was performed using Statistica for Windows, version 13.1 by StatSoft (USA).

Results: We observed 171 cases of neoplasms, including 144 benign tumours and 27 malignant tumours. Among the malignant tumors, the most common were breast cancer, thyroid cancer and hematologic cancer, and among benign tumors, colorectal polyps. Both neoplasms and benign tumors were diagnosed both in the short and long term after the diagnosis of acromegaly, but in the longer term only malignant tumors were diagnosed. Both types of tumors occurred more frequently in controlled acromegaly than in cured acromegaly. The incidence of cancer, regardless of type, was higher in patients with active acromegaly compared to cured patients.

Conclusions: This study confirmed the association between the activity of acromegaly as well as the time from diagnosis of the disease with the prevalence of neoplasms. For this reason, oncological vigilant and active search for cancer among patients with acromegaly at every stage of the disease are necessary.