Prevalence of comorbidities and associated factors in acromegaly patients in the Turkish population

BACKGROUND/AIM: The presence of comorbidities in patients with acromegaly causes an increase in morbidity and/or mortality and a decrease in quality of life. In this study, we aimed to investigate the demographic, clinical and laboratory features, prevalence of acromegaly-related comorbidities, and factors associated with these comorbidities in patients with acromegaly. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In the study, 96 patients who were followed up with the diagnosis of acromegaly were included. Clinical, laboratory and imaging features, and accompanying comorbidities of the patients were recorded from the patient files. RESULTS: Of the patients included in the study, 63 (65.6%) were female and 33 (34.4%) were male. The mean age of diagnosis was 42.61± 12.08, and the mean follow-up period was 9.97 ± 7.26 years. Median insulin-like growth factor 1 level was 238.16 ng/mL (30.5–820), median growth hormone level was 2.05 ug/L (0.1–29.4). A total of 60 (62.5%) of the patients were in the well-controlled group, and 36 (37.5%) had active disease at the time of inclusion. Diabetes mellitus (DM) was detected in 30 (31.3%) patients, prediabetes in 19 (28.8%) patients, hypertriglyceridemia in 38 (42.2%) patients, hypertension (HT) in 41 (42.7%) patients, cardiovascular disease in 5 (5.2%) patients, malignancy in 9 (9.4%) patients, obstructive sleep apnea syndrome in 8 (8.3%) patients, carpal tunnel syndrome in 11 (11.5%) patients, arthropathy in 5 (5.2%) patients, hearing loss in 7 (7.3%) patients, thyroid nodule in 56 (67.5%) patients, thyroid cancer in 4 (4.2%) patients, colonic polyp in 19 (38.8%) patients. CONCLUSION: In this study, we revealed that the most common comorbidities in acromegaly patients in the Turkish population are thyroid nodules, low high-density lipoprotein (HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) level, hypertriglyceridemia, HT, colonic polyps, DM, and prediabetes, and female sex and age at diagnosis are the most important factors associated with comorbidities.