File:Acromegaly serum growth hormone graph.jpg

Frequent blood sampling with serum GH measurement shows that in normal subjects (left panel) GH can fluctuate between undetectable levels (most of the time) and peaks of up to 30 μg/l (90 mIU/l), owing to the episodic nature of GH secretion, while in patients with acromegaly (an example is given on right panel), GH hypersecretion is continuous and GH never returns to undetectable levels.

1750-1172-3-17-5-l.jpg

Acromegaly

• (Greek, akros = extremities, megas = big).
• term was proposed by Pierre Marie, a French neurologist working in La Salpetrière Hospital, in Paris, who published the first description of the disease and its pathology in 1886.
• term is used when the disease begins in adulthood.

Reference

<pubmed>18578866</pubmed>| PMC2459162

Copyright

© 2008 Chanson and Salenave; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Philippe Chanson, et al. Orphanet J Rare Dis. 2008;3:17-17.