Acromegaly
Acromegaly is a condition in which the body produces too much growth hormone, leading to the excess growth of body tissues over time.
Typical features include:
Growth hormone is produced and released by the pituitary gland, a pea-sized gland just below the brain.
When growth hormone is released into the blood, it stimulates the liver to produce another hormone insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) which causes growth of muscle, bones and cartilage throughout the body.
This process is essential for growth and repair of body tissues.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.