Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Stress-related illness is commonly referred to the endocrine clinic, and often becomes a diagnosis of exclusion after extensive investigation. We provide evidence that a positive clinical diagnosis can be made without risk of missing organic illness.Methods: 101 consecutive and unselected referrals for ‘fatigue ?endocrine’ between 1/4/95 and 30/3/99 were identified from an endocrine clinic database (81 female, 20 male; mean age 41...

Classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) usually presents at birth with ambiguous genitalia or adrenal failure. Non-classical forms can present later with precocious puberty or may only present, in early adult life, with hyperandrogenism and amenorrhoea.An 86 year old lady presented with a toxic confusional state, male pattern balding and hirsuitism. Little history was available. The provisional diagnosis was an androgen secreting tumour, however, a history taken fro...

The cortisol day curve has been advocated in the assessment of glucocorticoid replacement therapy in adrenal failure but remains controversial.Objective: To determine the validity of this test within our practice.Method: A retrospective analysis using endocrine laboratory dataset.Results: 102 inpatient cortisol day curves from 76 patients were analysed. The serum cortisol was checked at 5 time points (pre and 1 hour post morning dose, before midday dose, pre and po...