Abstract
Objective: Growth hormone deficiency in adults (GHDA) is considered to be associated with increased
cardiovascular risk, most commonly reflected by the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome
(MS). However, there are still a limited number of studies comparing directly the
MS prevalence in GHD patients to that in general population. The aim of this study
was to investigate the individual risk factors of the MS in a cohort of GHD patients
and to compare its prevalence with an age- and sex-matched control group.
Design: A cross-sectional case-control study.
Methods: In total, 54 adult patients with GHD (childhood onset GHD (COGHD): n=19, adult onset
GHD (AOGHD): n=35) and 2 153 control subjects were studied. GHD was diagnosed according
to the Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline recommendations from 2011 and
MS was scored by the NCEP-ATP III definition.
Results: The main metabolic abnormalities in GHD group were increased waist circumference
(50.0%), low HDL-cholesterol (42.6%) and hypertriglyceridemia (40.7%) and their prevalence
was significantly higher (p=0.013, p=0.019 and p=0.010, respectively) than in control
group, where increased blood pressure prevailed (64.2%, p<0.0001). However, the difference
in the MS prevalence between the 2 groups (29.6% vs. 24.9% in controls) failed to
reach statistical significance (p=0.429). Patients with MS from both groups did not
differ significantly in their metabolic profile (except for increased blood pressure),
mean age and gender distribution.
Conclusions: Although GHDA was associated with the development of visceral obesity and dyslipidemia,
these adverse cardiovascular risk factors did not determine a higher prevalence of
the MS in Bulgarian GHD patients compared to control subjects. Furthermore, the individual
risk factors of the MS did not significantly differ between patients with MS from
both groups.
Key words
growth hormone deficiency - metabolic syndrome - abdominal obesity - dyslipidemia
- cardiovascular risk
