davebridges
commented
9 years ago Our opinion is that the non-secreting adenoma controls are technically a reasonable control, relative to “normal” controls. These samples are collected by the same surgeons using the same techniques and were processed identically. Furthermore these patients, even if not well age matched, do still have a pituitary tumor so we are controlling for this factor. To the concern that the non-functioning adenoma is phenotypically altering the physiology of these patients we propose to both mention this as a potential issue we have mentioned this as a caveat in the discussion with the following text:
One potential caveat to our approach is the use of patients with a non-secreting adenoma as the control group. It is possible that these adenomas may phenotypically affect the adipose tissue from these patients. We chose to include this as the control group as these samples not only collected in an identical manner from the same surgeons and processed identically, but also controls for potential non-secreting effects of pituitary tumor growths in the acromegaly subjects.
Regarding the study design, it seems that non-functioning pituitary adenoma patients are not the appropriate controls in this study as they are not normal, healthy controls. Indeed, non-functioning pituitary adenoma patients can present several hormone dysfunctions and other comorbidities that could be impacting adipose tissue biology.