Cortisol secretion and dexamethasone response in depression
Abstract
The authors administered 2 mg of dexamethasone at 11:00 p.m. to 37 unmedicated hospitalized endogenously depressed patients and assessed their plasma cortisol response at 4:00 and 11:00 p.m. the next day. In addition, on nondexamethasone days 26 of these patients had mean 24- hour plasma cortisol concentration determinations from samples taken at 30-min intervals and 32 had plasma determinations from a single sample taken at 4:00 and 11:00 p.m. Mean 24-hour plasma cortisol concentration was elevated in 50%; only 7 of the 26 were dexamethasone resistant, and 6 of these 7 were hypersecretors. The authors suggest that dexamethasone resistance reflects the abnormality of cortisol hypersecretion in depression and that the 2-mg dexamethasone suppression test is a highly specific but not very sensitive indicator of hypersecretion.
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