The Relation of Lesions of the Adrenal Gland to Chronic Nephritis and to Arteriosclerosis; an Anatomical Study

Vaquez and Aubertin advance three theories in explanation of the adrenal hyperplasia; first, that it may not be the cause of hypertension but "an antitoxic hyperplasia" caused by the retained products of metabolism which may be responsible also for the hypertension; second, that it may be the cause of hypertension but secondary to the renal lesion; third, that it may be the cause of hypertension but may antedate the renal lesion or be entirely independent of it. They, as well as other French writers, insist that this hyperplasia is almost constantly associated with chronic nephritis of the interstitial type and it is seldom found with the parenchymatous type of nephritis, or with other lesions. Hyperplasia of the adrenal, as far as my material enables one to judge, does not occur during the first and second decades. In the third decade it is relatively frequent in the absence of chronic arterial and renal disease but reaches the maximum in association with such disease after the fourth decade. It is an almost constant lesion in arteriosclerosis associated with chronic interstitial nephritis and left-sided heart hypertrophy, but occurs with almost equal frequency in arteriosclerosis with chronic nephritis of the parenchymatous type. It is a relatively frequent lesion of arteriosclerosis without chronic nephritis and of the latter without arteriosclerosis also. As the result of this analysis one is led to the view that while hyperplasia of the adrenal is a very frequent concomitant of chronic renal and arterial disease it is not exclusively a feature of either type of nephritis or yet of chronic vascular disease; but it probably represents the effect of some factor operating in that period of life in which chronic renal and arterial affections are most frequent. Worthy of special emphasis is the observation that the characteristic lesion of an adrenal, the seat of local arteriosclerosis, is of the type of the chronic productive inflammation seen in arteriosclerosis of the pancreas and kidney; that is, thickening of the vessels, increase of connective tissue and round cell infiltration. Associated with these changes is a hyperplasia which is very constant, and which may be, in part, of the nature of a compensatory hyperplasia similar to that seen in the liver of cirrhosis and acute yellow atrophy. A hyperplasia of this type, as has been shown, may occur in destructive lesions of the gland. This, however, does not explain hyperplasia in the absence of local vascular changes which fact is, possibly, as suggested by Landau, evidence, not of a correlation between kidney and adrenal, but of a vicarious hypertrophy depending upon lesions of some other organ of the body than the kidney, possibly some other ductless gland, affected by arteriosclerosis or other disease.