Context: Primary autoimmune hypophysitis (PAH) evolves in most untreated cases in irreversible hypopituitarism. PAH outcome, instead, after immunosuppressive treatment has not been completely clarified.
Objective: To evaluate hypophysitis and pituitary function outcomes.
Design: A prospective, double-arm study with a 2-year follow-up.
Setting: Referral center for pituitary disease.
Patients: Twenty PAH cases.
Interventions: Oral prednisone 50 mg/d or conservative strategy by observation.
Main outcome measures: Primary endpoint was the improvement/stabilization/worsening of PAH from baseline to a 2-year visit. Secondary endpoint was the improvement/stabilization/worsening of pituitary function from baseline to a 2-year visit.
Results: Twelve patients (57.1%) were treated with a glucocorticoid-immunosuppressive therapy, and eight patients (42.9%) were observed. At the 2-year visit, PAH improvement/recovery occurred in eight immunosuppressive-treated (66.7%) patients and in two untreated patients (25%). PAH worsened in three untreated patients (37.5%) and was considered stable in four immunosuppressive-treated (33.3%) and three untreated patients (37.5%). Improvement/recovery of pituitary function occurred more frequently in immunosuppressive-treated patients (58.3%) compared with untreated ones (25%; P = 0.04). Responsiveness to immunosuppressive treatment is correlated with antipituitary antibody presence (P = 0.01), occurrence of diabetes insipidus at PAH diagnosis (P = 0.01), absence of the physiological neuropituitary "bright spot" on T1-weighed images (P = 0.01), and pituitary stalk at optical chiasm larger than 3.9 mm (area under the curve: 0.97, sensibility: 100%, specificity: 100%; P = 0.04). On the other hand, we failed to identify factors predicting the outcome, among untreated patients.
Conclusions: Glucocorticoid treatment of hypophysitis improves pituitary secretion and should be encouraged in accordance with the evaluation of endocrine-, immunological-, and morphological-predictive markers.