Inactive pituitary adenoma

An inactive pituitary adenoma is, in simple words, a benign tumor in the anterior part of the pituitary gland, which is not accompanied by hypersecretion of pituitary hormones.

Reasons for appearance

At the moment, it is customary to correlate the main cause of adenoma with somatic mutations.

The dominant influence on the appearance of this change is the hypothalamic hormone. In addition, the hereditary nature of the disease has been established.

Scientists believe that the impetus for the creation of such a disease as hormonally inactive pituitary adenoma is:

• Head injuries and concussions;
• Infectious diseases that have a strong effect on the central nervous system. These may be previous brain abscesses, neurosyphilis, meningitis, brucellosis, encephalitis and others.
• Damage to the mother's body during pregnancy by toxic substances: alcohol, nicotine or drugs;
• Not long ago, a relationship was established between taking oral contraceptives and the occurrence of pituitary adenoma .

Symptoms of the disease

Since most often adenomas form of a decent size, the first noticeable symptoms are:

• Constant headaches. Occurs due to disruption of normal liquor outflow;
• A sharp and prolonged decrease in a person’s performance, rapid fatigue, bouts of tearfulness;
• Vomiting and nausea not associated with food intake;

The following indicators can also be highlighted:

• Adenohypophyseal insufficiency. It is usually expressed in menstrual irregularities in women and lack of erection in men. But when women detect such a symptom, they immediately visit a gynecologist’s office, which helps to detect diseases in the early stages, which cannot be said about men.
• Diabetes insipidus. The ability of normal water metabolism in the body is lost. Three stages can be distinguished: acute polyuria, after a week the water balance is restored, after which diabetes insipidus occurs in the third stage.
• Hyperprolactinemia. Most often it passes without pronounced symptoms.

Diagnosis of the disease

As a rule, when visiting a doctor, the patient has an adenoma of significant size and it is not difficult to detect it. After studying the hormonal background of a person, most often, a mild or moderate deficiency of pituitary tropic hormones is revealed.