What causes Adrenal Insufficiency?
Primary Adrenal Insufficiency (Addison's Disease)
- Surgical removal of both adrenal glands
- Autoimmune Diseases (when the body's own immune system attacks itself)
- Granulomatous Diseases (e.g. tuberculosis and histoplasmosis)
- Metastatic malignancies (Spread of cancers e.g. lung or breast cancer to the adrenal gland)
- Pharmacological steroid therapy
- Haemorrhage (bleeding in the adrenal gland, often as a result of anticoagulant therapy)
- Meningococcal septicaemia (Waterhouse-Friderichsen syndrome) - septicaemia (infection in the bloodstream) followed by adrenal
- Rare hereditary diseases
- Pneumocystis infection (as a complication of AIDS)
Secondary and Tertiary Adrenal Insufficiency
- Hypothalamic and Pituitary lesion
- Trauma
- Surgery
- Radiation
- Infection
- Tumours
- Suppression of the adrenals after long-term steroid use (this is covered in more detail in the section on the pituitary)
Adrenals
- What are the Adrenal Glands
- What can go wrong with the Adrenal Glands
- Adrenal Insufficiency
- Primary hyperaldosteronism (Conn's Syndrome)
- Phaeochromocytoma
- Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia
- Congenital Lipoid Adrenal Hyperplasia
- Cushing's Syndrome
- Nelson's syndrome
- 11ß-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency
- Neuroblastoma
- Adreno-cortical Carcinoma
- Androgen-secreting Tumours
- Incidentalomas
- Adrenal Surgery
- Bartter's and Gitelman's Syndrome