Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Proinflammatory cytokines, for example interleukin-6, have been found to stimulate the HPA axis at all levels. In animal models glucocorticoids have been shown to suppress cytokines. There may therefore be a balanced interaction during stress when both are raised. For this reason, we investigated patients undergoing routine coronary artery bypass grafting on day 3 post-operatively (CABG) to examine the mechanisms for failure of suppression of the HPA axis in resp...