Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Primary adrenal insufficiency (PAI) predisposes patients to infections, which can precipitate life-threatening adrenal crises. PAI patients are thought to be particularly vulnerable to COVID-19; however, little is known about its true impact on this group.Aim: To assess morbidity and health promotion attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic amongst a large cohort of PAI patients.Methods: In May 2020 COVID-19 information, ...

Patients on long term glucocorticoid replacement therapy have higher rates of morbidity and mortality. One causative factor may be non-physiological cortisol replacement. We have developed as part of the ULTRADIAN consortium (https://www.uib.no/en/ultradian) the U-RHYTHM, an ambulatory bio-sampling device that can collect clinical samples using in-vivo microdialysis every 20 minutes over the 24hour day whilst individuals continue with their normal everyday activities....

Background: Benign adrenal incidentalomas (AI) are found in 3-5% of adults. All patients should undergo a 1 mg -overnight dexamethasone suppression test (1 mg -DST) to exclude cortisol excess (non-functioning adrenal tumours, NFAT; serum cortisol ≤50 nmol/l) or diagnose possible mild autonomous cortisol secretion (MACS; serum cortisol >50 nmol/l). Current guidelines discourage repeating hormonal work-up in patients with benign AI. However, data underpinning this reco...

Introduction: Clinical Practice Guidelines1 advocate adrenal vein sampling (AVS) to distinguish between unilateral and bilateral primary aldosteronism (PA). Cannulating the right adrenal vein is difficult, and there is a lack of standardisation in sampling procedure and interpretation2. We audited our local service to identify improvements.Methods: All AVS procedures performed between January 2018-December 2020 (n = 31) wer...

Introduction: Primary aldosteronism (PA) is both the most common form of secondary hypertension and a high-risk subset associated with increased cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and renal morbidity compared to essential hypertension. Unilateral PA is amenable to surgery, biochemical cure and reversal of this excess risk; whilst bilateral disease is best treated through mechanism-directed medical therapy. Currently, PA subtype classification relies on adrenal venous sampling (AV...

Bilateral adrenal haemorrhage is an uncommon but life-threatening condition which may result from trauma, sepsis, coagulopathy, underlying tumour or autoimmune conditions. We present a 62-year-old female with a history of well controlled hypertension and asthma who was admitted with sudden onset epigastric pain and suspected cholecystitis. She received her first dose of Astrazeneca (AZ) Covid-19 vaccine seven days prior to onset of symptoms. Her systolic blood pressure was mor...

Background: Hyperandrogenism in congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is associated with virilisation in female patients and subfertility in both male and female patients. However, little is known regarding the association of hyperandrogenaemia with polycythaemia. We evaluate the association between the adrenal hormone profile and haematocrit (HCT)/haemoglobin (Hb) in a cohort of patients with classical CAH.Methods: Single centre retrospective analysis of...

A 56-year-old woman presented with progressive swelling of her face and fatigability. Investigating for Cushing’s, her 24-hour Urine Free Cortisol was negative at 43 and 70nmol/24hr (Reference interval or R.I. < 146 nmol/24hr) with overnight dexamethasone suppression test showing full suppression of cortisol to 34nmol/l. Her short synacthen test was normal at 30-minute cortisol of 753nmol/l (R.I.>420); on Zumenon. Other pituitary function tests were unremarkable b...

Aim: In light of recent publications - could a lower cortisol cut off value of ~350 nmol/l be used to safely rule out adrenal insufficiency (AI) compared to current local guideline cutoff value of either a baseline or 9am cortisol of 420 nmol/l? If so could this potentially help reduce the number of Co-syntropin stimulation tests (CST) performed?Background: Current local guidelines recommend a cortisol cut value of 420 nmol/l to rule out adrenal insuffic...

Incidentally discovered adrenal masses on abdominal imaging for unrelated reasons have a prevalence of 1-7%. A great majority of these are non-functioning adenomas, but 5-30% are associated with autonomous cortisol secretion (ACS), which is mainly subclinical, and 1-5% with phaeochromocytoma or Conn’s syndrome. Here we report two cases of overt functioning adrenal adenoma with coexisting ACS. We could not find any other reports of such cases in the literature.<p class...