Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Primary aldosteronism (PA) is the most frequent curable form of hypertension. Hypokalemia is a late symptom of PA. Consequently, PA often is not diagnosed for many years. Our aim was to identify clinical and laboratory parameters in a large cohort of PA patients obtained during their first assessment.Methods: 96 consecutive patients prospectively studied since 2008 at the German Conn’s Registry Center in Munich were eligible for this s...

Background: Screening for primary aldosteronism (PA) using the aldosterone to renin ratio (ARR) is recommended by clinical practice guidelines in patient groups with a high prevalence as the disease is reported by several authors in more than 10% of essential hypertensives (EH).Methods: Plasma aldosterone concentration (PAC) and direct renin (DR) were measured using two novel automated chemiluminescence assays (IDS-iSYS; Boldon, UK) and compared to the S...

Context: Unilateral adrenalectomy is the therapy of first choice in aldosterone producing adenoma (APA). Improvement of blood pressure (BP) and hypokalemia is achieved in the majority of patients. Because of hypoaldosteronism, hyperkalemia can develop in the postoperative course. Our aim was to analyze the frequency of hyperkalemia, to determine the cause of hypoaldosteronism and to assess the influence of preoperative mineralocorticoid antagonist (MRA) therapy at our center.<...

Primary Aldosteronism (PA) is the most frequent cause of endocrine hypertension. Three forms of familial hyperaldosteronism (FH) have been described, named FH-I to -III. Recently, a mutation of KCNJ5 has been shown to be associated with FH-III, whereas the cause of FH-II is still unknown. In this study we searched for mutations in KCNJ5 in 46 patients from 21 families with FH, in which FH-I was excluded. We identified a new germline G151E mutation in two PA affected subjects f...