Types
There are three major types of adrenal insufficiency.
- Primary adrenal insufficiency is due to impairment of the adrenal glands.
- One subtype is called idiopathic or unknown cause of adrenal insufficiency.
- 80% are due to an autoimmune disease called Addison's disease or autoimmune adrenalitis.
- Other cases are due to congenital adrenal hyperplasia or an adenoma (tumor) of the adrenal gland.
- Secondary adrenal insufficiency is caused by impairment of the pituitary gland or hypothalamus. The most common cause in the United States is exogenous steroid use. Other causes are a pituitary adenoma or microadenoma, hypothalamic tumor (surgical removal of a pituitary tumor can also suppress production of ACTH and lead to adrenal deficiency); Sheehan's syndrome, which is associated with impairment of only the pituitary gland.
- Tertiary adrenal insufficiency is due to hypothalamic disease and decrease in corticotropin releasing factor (CRF).
Read more about this topic: Adrenal Insufficiency
Famous quotes containing the word types:
“The rank and file have let their servants become their masters and dictators.... Provision should be made in all union constitutions for the recall of leaders. Big salaries should not be paid. Career hunters should be driven out, as well as leaders who use labor for political ends. These types are menaces to the advancement of labor.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)
“He types his laboured column—weary drudge!
Senile fudge and solemn:
Spare, editor, to condemn
These dry leaves of his autumn.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)
“As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting—the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”
—Saul Bellow (b. 1915)