• Clin Med (Lond) · Jun 2016

    Case Reports

    Lesson of the month 2: Houssay phenomenon - hypopitutarism leading to remission of diabetes.

    • Subhodip Pramanik, Rana Bhattacharjee, Pradip Mukhopadhyay, and Sujoy Ghosh.
    • Department of Endocrinology, Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education and Research, Kolkata, India.
    • Clin Med (Lond). 2016 Jun 1; 16 (3): 294296294-6.

    AbstractBecause of a pituitary insult and the subsequent loss of counter-regulatory hormones, individuals can experience increased sensitivity to insulin, hypoglycaemia or even complete amelioration of diabetes; this is known as the Houssay phenomenon. Severe dehydration following diarrhoea can lead to pituitary infarction causing hypopituitarism. We describe this situation in a patient with insulin-treated type-2 diabetes presenting with recurrent hypoglycaemia and cessation of insulin requirement along with weight loss, hypotension and hyponatraemia. Pituitary imaging revealed a partial empty sella and a synacthen stimulation test revealed an initial positive response but later loss of response, proving recent-onset pituitary dysfunction. Physicians should keep this possibility in mind while treating hypoglycaemia in stable diabetic individuals. Judicious supplementation of deficient hormones is of utmost importance.© 2016 Royal College of Physicians.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…