Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Acromegaly is a rare disease with high morbidity and mortality rates that occurs due to growth hormone (GH) hypersecretion from adenoma in somatotroph cells in the pituitary gland. It is thought that chronically high GH and Insulin-like Growth Factor-I (IGF-1) levels in its pathogenesis increase tissue collagen synthesis due to fibroblast activation. Prolidase enzyme is also the catalyst of the rate-limiting step of collagen synthesis. In our study, we planned to investigate prolidase enzyme levels in acromegaly patients who applied to our clinic.

Patients and Methods: 31 acromegaly patients and 26 healthy volunteers were included in the study. The patients’ age, gender, age at diagnosis, disease duration, diagnosis and current GH and IGF-1 levels, sedimentation, CRP, white blood cell values, serum prolidase enzyme level, imaging, and medical treatments were scanned from their files.

Results: The average age at diagnosis of the acromegaly group was 44.64±11.58. The lowest age at diagnosis was 19, and the highest age at diagnosis was 72. The average disease duration was 6.8±4.77 years. While the average prolidase level in the patients was 1111±179.5 U/l, it was 1270.5±282 U/l in the control group. There was no statistically significant difference between the acromegaly group and the control group (P=0.17). There was no correlation between acromegaly disease duration and prolidase level (r=0.938). It was observed that there was a correlation between the development of visual field defect and prolidase level (P=0.019).

Conclusion: There is a few study in the literature evaluating prolidase enzyme activity in the acromegaly patient group. The results in our study may be related to the effect of examining a limited patient group. Further studies are needed to examine different parameter dynamics with long-term follow-up in large patient groups to elucidate the relationship between acromegaly and prolidase enzyme.