Cortisol is the main biomarker of physiological stress in fish. It is usually measured in plasma, which requires blood collection. Though cortisol is produced in the anterior kidney, it can diffuse easily through cell membranes due to its lipophilic nature. Taking advantage of that, some non-invasive techniques have been developed to measure cortisol directly in the water from fish-holding tank...

Background: Normative data have been established for stimulated serum total cortisol in children but not for serum free cortisol. Methods: Children who were referred for ACTH testing to rule out adrenal insufficiency were enrolled. Only children with normal response and normal androgen levels were included. Total cortisol was determined by a chemiluminescence method, and free cortisol was measu...

Cushing's syndrome (CS) may be difficult to distinguish from pseudo-Cushing states (PCS) based on physical findings or urinary glucocorticoid excretion. As the lack of diurnal variation in serum cortisol is characteristic of CS, we studied whether diurnal cortisol determinations could discriminate CS from PCS. Two hundred and sixty-three patients were evaluated: 240 had CS, and 23 had PCS. Urin...

We studied 130 healthy aged women (n = 57) and men (n = 73), age 65-88 yr, with age-related reductions in insulin-like growth factor I and gonadal steroid levels to assess the interrelationships between cortisol and growth hormone (GH) secretion and whether these relationships differ by sex. Blood was sampled every 20 min from 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM; cortisol was measured by RIA and GH by immunorad...

Natural and synthetic glucocorticoids (GCs) have been used for decades to suppress inflammation. In this paper, we re-examine the role of the endogenous GC, cortisol, as a primary homeostatic regulator of the human inflammatory response to injury. Our data show that cortisol regulation of innate immunity can be both pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory. Using a human model of in vivo cortisol...

Hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) are assumed to provide a stable, integrative marker of long-term systemic cortisol secretion. However, contrary to this assumption, some recent observations have raised the possibility that HCC may be subject to acute influences, potentially related to cortisol incorporation from sweat. Here, we provide a first detailed in vivo investigation of this possibilit...

This prospective, interventional, case-controlled study sought to determine the association between adrenocortical function and mortality in dogs with naturally occurring Babesia rossi babesiosis. Sixty-eight dogs with canine babesiosis were studied and fifteen normal dogs were used as controls. Blood samples were obtained from the jugular vein in each dog prior to treatment, at admission to ho...

To assess the hypothesis that cortisol release in rainbow trout is modulated by glucose levels, we first evaluated cortisol release [basal and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)-regulated] by head kidney tissue superfused with medium reflecting hypoglycaemic, normoglycaemic or hyperglycaemic conditions. Next, cortisol release from head kidney fragments in static incubations was assessed in para...

BACKGROUND Most studies on cortisol have focused on smaller, selected samples. We therefore aimed to sex-specifically study the diurnal cortisol pattern and explore its association with abdominal obesity in a large unselected population. METHODS In 2001-2004, 1811 men and women (30-75 years) were randomly selected from the Vara population, south-western Sweden (81% participation rate). Of the...

OBJECTIVE A dose-response study with different doses of dexamethasone (dex) to assess the corticotrophic resistance in Cushing's disease (CD) using salivary cortisol as an end point has not yet been evaluated. We also reported our experience with salivary cortisol compared to plasma cortisol determination during dex suppression test (DST) and after ovine corticotrophin release hormone (oCRH) te...