Excess mortality in women with pituitary disease: a meta-analysis

Summary Background Increased mortality has been reported in patients with pituitary disease, with some studies showing higher standard mortality rates (SMR) in women than in men. Objective To assess overall SMR for men and women with benign pituitary disease without excessive ATCH or GH secretion and to investigate associations between SMR and time period of diagnosis. Design From searches in PubMed, Embase and Web of Science databases, and reference lists of major reviews and original articles, we included original studies providing SMR values and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for men and women separately. Thirty articles were studied in detail. Six studies were eligible for the meta‐analysis of sex‐specific mortality, and seven for the analysis of association between SMR and diagnosis period. Results Individual studies (total 5412 patients) reported total SMR values (men and women together) ranging from 1·21 to 3·80. SMR varied from 0·98 to 3·36 in men and from 2·11 to 4·54 in women. Weighted SMR values were significantly higher in women (2·80; CI 2·59–3·02) than in men (2·06; CI 1·94–2 20) (P