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Individuals taking steroid tablets for more than 3 months are over 6 times more likely to be diagnosed with adrenal insufficiency than those treated with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, according to research. In addition, they have a greater risk of being hospitalized for adrenal insufficiency, while long-term users of inhaled steroids have an increased risk of developing adrenal insufficiency but without any increase in the number of hospitalizations. Steroids, also called corticosteroids, are anti-inflammatory medicines used to treat various conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), allergies, arthritis and autoimmune diseases. When taking these widely-prescribed medicines, such as prednisolone,...

Researchers have found that the cause of a common type of high blood pressure originates in a tiny benign nodule, present in one-in-twenty people with hypertension. The nodule produces a hormone, aldosterone, that controls how much salt is in the body. The new discovery is a gene variant in some of these nodules which leads to a vast but intermittent overproduction of the hormone. The variant affects a protein called CADM1 and stops cells in the body from "talking" to each other and saying that it is time to stop making aldosterone. An issue for doctors is the fluctuating release...

It was 1999. The symptoms soon became intense and untreatable. ... he would spend the next 11 years mostly confined to a hospital bed Lindsay immersed himself in medical research, determined to find a way out. He saw specialists from endocrinology, neurology, internal medicine and other specialties. When one doctor was out of ideas, he referred Lindsay to a psychiatrist. That’s when Lindsay he realized he’d have to figure his predicament out on his own. While in college he had picked up a 2,200-page endocrinology textbook ... He zeroed in on his adrenal glands... In 2002, he gave a presentation...