Quality of Life in Growth Hormone Deficiency and Acromegaly

This article highlights QoL as an important end point in the clinical and therapeutic evaluation of chronic endocrine diseases, such as AGHD and acromegaly. Despite being extreme conditions of the GH status, both impair QoL significantly and even share some common problems like easy fatigability or dislike of body image. The availability of questionnaires designed to analyze the problems that characterize these patients has shed light on dimensions often ignored by clinicians, which are of concern for the affected patients. Examples are the AGHDA score and the QLS-H for AGHD and the AcroQoL questionnaire for acromegaly. Replacement therapy with GH in AGHD is associated with improvement in QoL, proportionally to the degree of initial impairment, and is maintained over several years of therapy. In acromegaly, despite improvement in QoL in parallel to endocrine control following successful therapy, it still seems to remain below normative scores in the general population; appearance and physical dimensions are the most affected, and probably benefit from an earlier diagnosis and control of the disease, before irreversible changes take place. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.