Acromegaly

Diagnosis of Acromegaly

Diagnosing Acromegaly

Blood Tests

If your doctor suspects acromegaly from your symptoms, they will order blood tests to measure your levels of human growth hormone.

Levels of growth hormone naturally vary from minute to minute as it is released from the pituitary glandin spurts. Therefore to accurately diagnose acromegaly, growth hormone needs to be measured under conditions that normally suppress growth hormone secretion.

To ensure an accurate result, you may be referred to a hospitaldoctor for a glucose tolerance test. This involves testing your blood after drinking a solution or drink containing the sugar glucose.

In most people, drinking the glucose solution will suppress the release of growth hormone, but in people with acromegaly, the level of growth hormone in the blood will remain elevated.

Your doctor will also measure your level of IGF-1, which should increase with the level of growth hormone. An elevated IGF-1 level almost always indicates acromegaly.

Brain Scans

You may then have a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of your brain to locate and define the size of the pituitary gland tumour causing your acromegaly.A computerised tomography (CT) scan can be carried out if you are unable to have an MRI scan.

Medically Reviewed by a doctor on 23 Jun 2016

Articles for acromegaly

Symptoms of Acromegaly

Acromegaly can cause a wide range of symptoms that tend to develop slowly over time. Typical symptoms include: joint pain; large hands and feet; carpal tunnel syndrome (compression of the nerve in the wrist, causing numbness and weakness of the hands); thick, coarse, oily skin; skin tags.

Causes of Acromegaly

Acromegaly is caused by excessive production of growth hormone. This usually occurs as the result of a benign (non-cancerous) brain tumour in the pituitary gland called an adenoma, but rare cases have been linked to tumours elsewhere in the body, such as in the lungs and pancreas.

Complications of Acromegaly

If acromegaly is left untreated, you may beat risk of the following health problems: type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure (hypertension), cardiovascular disease, cardiomyopathy (a disease of the heart muscle), etc.

Diagnosis of Acromegaly

If your doctor suspects acromegaly from your symptoms, they will order blood tests to measure your levels of human growth hormone. Levels of growth hormone naturally vary from minute to minute as it is released from the pituitary glandin spurts.

Introduction

Acromegaly is a condition in which the body produces too much growth hormone, leading to the excess growth of body tissues over time. Acromegaly is a genetic condition which develops when the pituitary glands in the brain overproduce growth hormone. This usually occurs before the onset of puberty.

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