In July, the Society issued a Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) on strategies for treating Cushing’s syndrome entitled Treatment of Cushing’s Syndrome: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline, which was published online and appeared in the August issue of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).
Cushing’s syndrome occurs when a person has excess cortisol in the blood for an extended period, according to the Hormone Health Network. When it is present in normal amounts, cortisol is involved in the body’s response to stress, maintains blood pressure and cardiovascular function, keeps the immune system in check, and converts fat, carbohydrates and proteins into energy. Chronic overexposure to the hormone can contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease, infections, and blood clots in veins.
In some cases, tumors found on the adrenal or pituitary glands or elsewhere in the body cause the overproduction of cortisol and lead to the development of Cushing’s syndrome. The Clinical Practice Guidelines focus on this form of the condition, known as endogenous Cushing’s syndrome.
“People who have active Cushing’s syndrome face a greater risk of death – anywhere from nearly twice as high to nearly five times higher – than the general population,” says Lynnette K. Nieman, MD, of the National Institutes of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, MD, and chair of the task force that authored the guideline. “To reduce the risk of fatal cardiovascular disease, infections or blood clots, it is critical to identify the cause of the Cushing’s syndrome and restore cortisol levels to the normal range.”
In the CPG, the Endocrine Society recommends that the first-line treatment for endogenous Cushing’s syndrome be the removal of the tumor unless surgery is not possible or unlikely to address the excess cortisol. Surgical removal of the tumor is optimal because it leaves intact the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which is integral to the body’s central stress response.
Other members of the Endocrine Society task force that developed this CPG include: Beverly M.K. Biller of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass.; James W. Findling of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Wisc.; M. Hassan Murad of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.; John Newell-Price of the University of Sheffield in Sheffield, U.K.; Martin O. Savage of the William Harvey Research Institute at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry in London, U.K.; and Antoine Tabarin of CHU de Bordeaux and INSERM at the University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France.
The CPG was co-sponsored by the European Society of Endocrinology.
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