Abstract
Introduction:
The dexamethasone test has been widely used for diagnosing hypercortisolism.Materials and Methods:
We assessed the relationship between the basal and suppressed cortisol values in urine and plasma during a low-dose dexamethasone test in patients with proved Cushing's disease.Results:
A statistically highly significant correlation was found (for urine cortisol: r = 0.66, P <0.0001; for plasma cortisol: r = 0.94, P <0.003).Conclusions:
These findings imply that the lower the pretest cortisol values, the lower are the suppressed values. In patients with suspected Cushing's syndrome and only slightly elevated cortisol excretjon or low plasma concentration, the outcome might easily be considered normal. This point is particularly pertinent when assessing the post-treatment status.Keywords
Cushing's syndrome Adrenal cortex function test Hypercortisolism
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© 2004, Author(s). This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.