Cardiac effects of slow-release lanreotide, a slow-release somatostatin analog, in acromegalic patients

Cardiac involvement, mostly characterized by left ventricular hypertrophy a ssociated with various degrees of cardiac dysfunction, greatly contributes to the increased mortality and morbidity observed in acromegaly. Lanreotide is a new SRIF analog characterized by a slow-release (SR) formulation with the peculiarity of a 30-mg im administration every 10-14 days. In this stu dy, 13 patients with postoperative active acromegaly (9 females, 4 males, 4 5.9 +/- 16.3 yr old) underwent an echo-Doppler and hormonal study before an d during a 12-month period of treatment with SR-lanreotide. GH and insulin- like growth factor I plasma levels (mean +/- so) decreased significantly th roughout the study period (from 10.1 +/- 2.2 to 3.9 +/- 0.9 ng/mL for GH, P < 0.005; and from 511.0 +/- 33.0 to 305.0 +/- 34.2 ng/mL for insulin-like growth factor I, P < 0.0001). Left ventricular mass index (mean +/- so, 137 .1 +/- 7.5 g/m(2) at baseline) decreased after 3 months (120.0 +/- 5.4 g/m( 2)), 6 months (111.7 +/- 5.7 g/m(2)), and 12 months (110.3 +/- 5.2 g/m(2)) of treatment (P < 0.005 at each time-point). This reduction in left ventric ular mass index was accompanied by an improvement in some indexes of left v entricular diastolic function, especially the isovolumetric relaxation time (mean +/- so, 109.1 +/- 4.6 m/sec at baseline), which decreased after 3 mo nths (91.9 +/- 2.8 m/sec), 6 months (92.3 +/- 3.2 m/sec), and 12 months (92 .2 +/- 3.0 m/sec) of treatment (P < 0.005 at each time-point). We conclude that SR-lanreotide is able to improve cardiac morphology and functional abn ormalities in acromegaly; whether such beneficial effects on cardiac parame ters will contribute to improve life expectancy in these patients should be further investigated.