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Epidemiology
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Figure 1 |
Autoimmune hypophysitis is rare, but part of the rarity is due to the fact that many physicians do not know about it and therefore do not diagnose it. Introduction of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the mid 1980s has made physicians more aware of autoimmune hypophysitis, and now this disease should enter in the differential diagnosis of any mass occupying the sella turcica (see Figure 1).
There are at the moment no good epidemiologic data that can be used to derive the prevalence of autoimmune hypophysitis in the general population. We reviewed all the articles we could find on autoimmune hypophysitis, and identified a total of 332 patients, up to January 1 2003. Most of the patients are women (268 of 332 = 81%), as in many other autoimmune diseases (Figure 2).
Figure 2 |
Figure 3 |
Unique, however, to autoimmune hypophysitis is the striking association with pregnancy: in 43% of the women (115 of 268), the disease appears late in pregnancy or in the post-period. As shown in Figure 3 most commonly symptoms appear around the time of delivery.
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