Endocrine disease value for understanding hormonal actions

Abstract

Disorders involving the endocrine glands, their hormones, and the targets of the hormones may cover the full spectrum ranging from an incidentally found, insignificant abnormality that is clinically silent to a flagrant, life-threatening metabolic derangement. Some endocrine diseases such as well-differentiated thyroid carcinoma present as neoplastic growths, which rarely are associated with evidence of endocrine dysfunction. However, most clinically relevant endocrine disorders are associated with over-or underexpression of hormone action. There is a great deal of phenotypic variability in the clinical manifestations of each of the endocrine disorders, reflecting in part the severity of the derangement and the underlying pathophysiologic mechanisms. Although most of the individual clinical endocrine syndromes have multiple pathophysiologic mechanisms, the qualitative manifestations of the disease states are similar owing to the relatively limited ways in which the body responds to too much or too little hormone action. © 2005 Humana Press Inc.