The aim of the present study is to evaluate the measurement of midnight salivary cortisol as a method of screening for Cushing’s syndrome (CS). Here we tested the performance of a highly sensitive electrochemiluminescence immunoassay (ECLIA) for midnight salivary cortisol measurement in an extensive clinical study (n=104). Three groups were investigated: 30 patients with CS, 34 with obesity and 40 healthy normal weight controls. All of them collected saliva samples at 24:00 h and urine samples over the same day (24 hour period). An electrochemiluminescence immunoassay was used to measure salivary cortisol. Mean midnight salivary cortisol in healthy volunteers, obese patients and patients with CS was 8.33 ± 3.62, 8.13 ± 4.47 and 33.11 ± 21.68 nmol/l, respectively. No significant difference was found between midnight salivary cortisol in healthy and obese subjects (P>0.05). In contrast, salivary cortisol at midnight was significantly higher in patients with CS (P<0.001) as compared to both other groups. The cut-off point of 14.2 nmol/l yielded a sensitivity of 93.3% and a specificity of 94.2% (AUCROC=0.984 ± 0.01(0.965-1.000). A strong positive correlation between midnight salivary cortisol and urinary free cortisol has been found in the CS group (r=0.686, P<0.0001). Our results demonstrate that measurement of midnight salivary cortisol could be successfully used as a first-line screening method for CS. Our data approve ECLIA as a simple, reliable and timesaving method for the assessment of salivary cortisol. Automated measurement of midnight salivary cortisol by ECLIA would facilitate the routine practice in the screening for CS.
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Primary aldosteronism (PA) has long been considered a rare disease, but a higher prevalence was suggested recently. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of PA in a group of Bulgarian hypertensive patients, including patients with adrenal incidentalomas (AI). The aldosterone to renin ratio (ARR)>750 was used as a positive screening test and the Captopril test was performed to confirm the diagnosis. Adrenal CT scan was used to differentiate between the main subtypes of PA- aldosterone-producing adenoma (APA) and idiopathic hyperaldosteronism (IHA). The diagnosis of APA was retrospectively confirmed after surgery. After excluding other forms of endocrine hypertension, except PA, we investigated a total of 472 consecutive hypertensive patients, among them 96 patients with AI. Final diagnosis of PA was reached in 38 patients (8.05%) in the entire hypertensive population and in 12 patients (12.5%) among hypertensive patients with AI. In the group of PA, 15 patients (39.5%) were diagnosed with APA and 23 patients (60.5%) had an IHA. Among all patients with PA 21 (55.3 %) presented with hypokalemia. Our findings of a relatively high prevalence of PA support an early diagnosis of this potentially curable disease, especially in hypertensive patients with AI.
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