Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: ‘Primary Aldosteronism Detection, Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines’ from the Endocrine Society (2008) recommend the use of the aldosterone- renin ratio (ARR) to detect primary aldosteronism (PA) in patient groups with high prevalence of PA. The guidelines suggest cut-offs specific to assay type and measurement units. The department of Clinical Chemistry and Metabolic Medicine at RLBUHT recently moved to a direct renin method (iSYS, Immunodiagnostics) ...

Measurement of cortisol is used in the differential diagnosis of Addisons’ disease (deficiency), Cushing’s disease (excess), hypopituitarism, adrenal hyperplasia and carcinoma. Cortisol is routinely measured by immunoassay, which has wide inter-assay variability with manufacturer dependent bias. Despite this, universal cut-offs are used as criteria for interpretation of dynamic function tests of the pituitary adrenal axis.Using a fully validate...