[Treatment of acromegaly with sustained-release lanreotide. A new somatostatin analog]. / Traitement de l'acromégalie par une forme à libération prolongée du lanréotide. Un nouvel analogue de la somatostatine.

The recovery of acromegaly is not obtained in about 50 percent of cases treated with radiotherapy and/or transsphenoidal surgery. Somatostatin analogs prescribed in such cases are effective but need either several subcutaneous injections a day or continuous infusions with pumps. Long-acting formulations of the new somatostatin analog lanreotide should avoid such drawbacks. Nine acromegalics, not cured by pituitary surgery (associated with radiotherapy in 7) received on IM injection of a long acting formulation of lanreotide twice a month for one year. Basal evaluation included: clinical examination, routine analyses, gall bladder ultrasonography, hormonal investigation of pituitary function including GH and IgF-1 measurements, visual field evaluation and pituitary scanning. A similar evaluation was performed on months 6 and 12 of treatment. The clinical symptoms of acromegaly progressively improved during therapy. Plasma GH levels decreased significantly (P < 0.01) from 24.2 +/- 2.1 to 9.3 +/- 1.2, 6.4 +/- 1.4 and 7.9 +/- 1.1 micrograms/l on months 3, 6 and 12, respectively. Plasma IgF-1 levels were normalized, decreasing from 676 +/- 40 to 331 +/- 30, 350 +/- 36, and 317 +/- 29 ng/ml on months 3, 6 and 12, respectively. Plasma lanreotide levels remained stable throughout the treatment. Side-effects included slight and transient diarrhoea and abdominal cramps which disappeared after 6 months of treatment. No gallstones appeared during treatment. These results show that one injection, twice a month, of a long-acting formulation containing 30 mg lanreotide is able to control the evolutivity of acromegalies not cured by pituitary radiotherapy and/or transsphenoidal surgery. Such formulations are well tolerated and avoid the drawbacks of either several subcutaneous injections a day or continuous infusions of somatostatin analogs.

[Diagnostic value of a distinct rise in sedimentation rate]. / Valeur diagnostique d'une augmentation franche de la vitesse de sédimentation.

Among the 931 patients who were admitted, over a 9-month period, to an internal medicine department, a group of 84 patients (9 p. 100) whose erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) was 70 mm or more at 1 hour was selected and compared to the remaining 847 patients whose ESR was below 70 mm at 1 hour. In most cases, a pathology likely to account for the distinct rise observed in ESR was found (infection in 42 p. 100 of the cases, malignant disease in 27 p. 100, inflammation in 20 p. 100), and only 5 p. 100 of these rises remained unexplained. This makes an ESR of 70 mm or more a good index of morbidity generally, without pointing at any specific disease. An ESR of 70 mm or more has very low sensitivity (always below 30 p. 100), so that no disease whatsoever can be excluded when the ESR is only slightly elevated. Moreover, in all but infectious diseases a distinctly high ESR is not an index of severity.

[A multifactorial etiologic approach to diabetic dyschromatopsia. Study of 100 diabetics]. / Approche pathogénique multifactorielle de la dyschromatopsie diabétique. Etude de 100 diabétiques.

Diabetic dyschromatopsia is frequent and is a true complication of diabetes mellitus. Causative factors other than retinopathy have been suggested, but they remain unclear. We have explored the color vision of 100 diabetics aged 16 to 65 (88 insulin-dependent, 12 non-insulin dependent) with Lanthony's D15 desatured panel. Degenerative complications were looked for, especially by fundoscopy and electrophysiological exploration of peripheral nerves using specific scoring. 73% of the diabetics had dyschromatopsia. Dyschromatopsia was significatively more frequent when retinopathy was present (26 out of 30 diabetics with retinopathy versus 47/70 without). We explain the absence of a strict parallelism between dyschromatopsia and retinopathy by the intervention of other factors. Whereas the equilibration of the diabetes was not different between the groups with or without dyschromatopsia, patient age, microalbuminuria, blood pressure and alcohol intake were higher in patients with dyschromatopsia. The greater prevalence of peripheral neuropathy in patients with dyschromatopsia, confirmed by electrophysiology, and independently from the existence of retinopathy, is an indicator of the existence of neuronal disease, whose level remains to be determined. Our results are the indispensible preliminary step to a study of the respective importance of these pathogenic factors.