Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Patients on long-term glucocorticoid treatment are at risk of adrenal insufficiency during glucocorticoid treatment. The side effect can occur during glucocorticoid treatment if there is a mismatch between glucocorticoid requirements and production/intake. High-dose glucocorticoid treatment is often sufficient to overcome most stressful situations. A low-dose of 5 mg prednisolone/day is however, equivalent to 20 mg hydrocortisone, a dose often used as basal glucoco...

Introduction: Evaluation of glucocorticoid production generally requires a dynamic test. Cut-off levels for baseline cortisol concentrations predicting the outcome of a Synacthen test have been proposed for different cortisol assays. With introduction of the new Roche Elecsys Cortisol II assay, P-cortisol concentrations are expected to decrease by 20%. We have investigated cut-off levels for baseline P-cortisol concentrations measured with the Roche Elecsys Cortisol II assay t...

Background and aim: Identifying patients with glucocorticoid-induced adrenal insufficiency poses a challenge. We investigated whether factors associated with exogenous hypercortisolism (as a proxy of overall elevated glucocorticoid exposure) could predict the risk of glucocorticoid-induced adrenal insufficiency in patients with polymyalgia rheumatica and/or giant cell arteritis during long-term low-dose prednisolone treatment.Material and methods: Baseli...

Introduction: Pharmacological glucocorticoid (GC) treatment may cause iatrogenic adrenal insufficiency (GIA), although the prevalence and clinical implications are debated. With 3% of the Danish population redeeming prescriptions of systemic GC annually, the number of patients at risk is potentially extensive. Taken together, there is an unmet need for a prospective and unbiased assessment of the GIA prevalence.Materials and Methods: The data for this re...