Evening urinary free corticoids: a screening test in Cushing's syndrome and incidentally discovered adrenal tumours

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Abstract
In this study, we investigated the usefulness of the determination of evening urinary free controls creatinine in samples collected from 20.00 to 24.00 h as a screening test in Cushing''s syndrome. In controls (N = 61) the ratio values ranged from 1.1 to 9.4 .mu.mol/mol, whereas in patients with Cushing''s syndrome (N = 20), they ranged from 27.5 to 855.5 .mu.mol/mol. However, in 28% of patients with major obesity (> 50% overweight) and no hypercortisolism, the ratio values were between 9.4 to 27.8 .mu.mol/mol. A short (10 days) hypocaloric diet induced a decrease in the values in 75% of these patients; the normal range was reached in 50% of them. In addition, the evening urinary free corticoids creatinine was slightly abnormal in 8 out of 10 patients with incidentally discovered ''silent'' adrenal adenomas, whereas it was normal in all 6 with other adrenal masses. In conclusion, evening urinary free corticoids/creatinine is easy to obtain and it reaches a higher sensitivity (100%) and specificity (97%) than the 24 h urinary free corticoids. In the case of borderline values, the presence of overweight should be taken into account.

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