Acromegaly Support Group

You can ask for your bloodwork results and there you can read about the normal range for both.

I think it's 117-329 for IGF-1 and 0.0 - 6.0 for GH.

They say that IGF-1 is more reliable because GH is very unstable and may de different in the morning and in the the evening.

I hope it's helpful.

Thanks Yarick...I got a little worried when I saw JohnD1's discussion post stating his IGF-1 was 45 & the doctor considered that high & should be 32 or below and that before surgery he was 131. What you say is more like what I was thinking. I did look at my most recent test results & the endo has written that my goal is to be less than 190 and GH goal is to be less than 1.0. This gets so confusing. Thanks for your response, I feel better now.

Janey, John is on the other side of the big puddle and some times their way of measuring the values differs. That makes it a little more complicated for discussions, on top of everything else. That is one of the reasons Mayo makes me send them blood so they can run their own test and not rely on some outside lab. Each lab gives you a lab report that includes the values that tells you what their ranges are. Another consideration is that the values for normal ranges will be different for men and women at different ages, too. I think you might look around on line and find some more detailed information if you're really interested.

It seems that the docs prefer to have the hGH tested early in the a.m. when it is done by fasting blood work instead of OGTT, probably because of that variance that Yarick mentioned.

My endo set my goal at about 50-70% of the "normal" range listed on the lab results. However, my neurosurgeon wasn't concerned, as long as I stayed within the "normal" range. The goal may be different if you know there is still tumor, or effects continue.

Hi,

My daughters IGF-1 is 570 she is 29yrs old, we were told 190-280 was the normal level for her age, it does go on your age. GH was 12

Janey

Yes, these units are confusing, all metric, but all different. In whatever units they are using at my hospital on this side of the pond, 32 is the top of the age-adjusted range, and I am at 45 units, so about a third higher than I should be.

GH is a bit up still, but compared to my IGF-1, it was never that high, for an acromegalic anyway (7.5).

John

OK, I have finally found a conversion for the SI units we use in the UK and the measurements that the US uses.

I am at 45 nanomoles/litre of IGF-1. That equates to 344 micrograms/ml.

I need to be below 32 nmol/l. That equates to 244.

Conversion rate is

ng/ml to nmol/L divide by 0.131
nmol/L to ng/ml multiply by 0.131

Note that this conversion applies only to IGF-1 as different substances have different molecular weights!

John

Why can't IGF-1 measurements be standardized and the same norms be used by all labs?

I remember seeing some complaints in my research that there are problems in comparing data because the values are difficult to compare because it is not done that way and I'm running into problems in regards to IGF-1 at different labs because the docs at Mayo Clinic do not want to trust the values from any other lab and so I have to have blood drawn, then frozen, then find dry ice, then argue with (sometimes) with the posal employees about their regulations concerning the safety of sending blood and dry ice and whether or not they'll do it and whether or not they'lll send it by air or by surface and just what quantity of dry ice they'll accept.

The lab reports that I receive from different labs differ. They state what their norms are for IGF1. This lends creedence to the complaints I have seen.

Also, anyone who has read Northwest2's most recent journal has read the agony she has lived because of some problems related to labs and IGF-1 problems - if I remember correctly, with some sort of agent or reagent......

I've just looked at my recent letter from my endocrinolgist to see what measurements he uses. It think it's the same in the UK as the US as my recent IGF-1 after my 3rd octreotide injection was 129ng/ml, which he thought was slightly lower than they would like longterm.

It's all so confusing isn't it.

Rose, the units that I was given are SI units, i.e. the current international standard ones. Of course, these being international, the US sticks to the ones they've always used, thank you very much, don't trust the cheese-eating surrender-monkey French you know :-)

The UK too of course is a bit of a mishmash. Usually we use SI units, but we buy beer in pints and drive in miles. We buy petrol in litres but talk about how many miles we get to the gallon! It sounds from Shelley like some hospitals here use the old standard units too.

John