Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Scott, Lucinda V
• Teh, James
• Reznek, Rodney
• Martin, Andrew
• Sohaib, Aslam
• G. Dinan, Timothy

Titel

Small adrenal glands in chronic fatigue syndrome: a preliminary computer tomography study

Ist Teil von

• Psychoneuroendocrinology, 1999-10, Vol.24 (7), p.759-768

Ort / Verlag

Oxford: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

1999

Quelle

Elsevier Journal Backfiles on ScienceDirect (DFG Nationallizenzen)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• No inclusive or satisfactory biomedical explanation for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has as yet been forwarded. Recent research suggests that a dysregulated hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA) may be contributory, and in particular that there may be diminished forward drive and adrenal under-stimulation. In this preliminary study we wished to examine a cohort of CFS patients in whom evidence for such hypofunctioning was found. Our aim was to establish whether these patients had altered adrenal gland size. Patients were recruited from a fatigue clinic. Those who fulfilled the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) criteria underwent a 1 μg adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) stimulation test, a test of adrenal gland functioning. Eight subjects (five females, three males) with a subnormal response on this test underwent a computer tomography (CT) adrenal gland assessment. Measurements were compared with those from a group of 55 healthy subjects. The right and left adrenal gland bodies were reduced by over 50% in the CFS subjects indicative of significant adrenal atrophy in a group of CFS patients with abnormal endocrine parameters. This is the first study to use imaging methods to measure adrenal gland size in CFS. It is a limitation of this study that a selected CFS sample was employed. A future larger study would optimally employ an unselected cohort of CFS patients. This study has implications not only for the elucidation of CFS pathophysiology, but also for possible therapeutic strategies.