It has been over 50 years since Hans Selye formulated his concept of stress. This came after the isolation of epinephrine and norepinephrine and after the sympathetic system was associated with Walter Cannon's "fight or flight" response. The intervening years have witnessed a number of dis- coveries that have furthered our understanding of the mechanisms of the stress response. The isolation, identification and manufacture of gluco- corticoids, the identification and synthesis of ACTH and vasopressin, and the demonstration of hypothalamic regulation of ACTH secretion were pivotal discoveries....

This volume represents the first attempt to present in one place the clinical syndromes and the pathophysiologic basis for the "resistance states" to each of the classes of steroid hormones. Glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoids, androgens, estrogens, progesterone and vitamin D have widely diverse roles ranging from the control of homeostasis to reproduction and bone formation. They are similar in that they share a chemical structure and that their action is in the cell nucleus where they induce transcription of specific genes leading to synthesis of function-specific proteins. Clinical...

It has been over 50 years since Hans Selye formulated his concept of stress. This came after the isolation of epinephrine and norepinephrine and after the sympathetic system was associated with Walter Cannon's "fight or flight" response. The intervening years have witnessed a number of dis- coveries that have furthered our understanding of the mechanisms of the stress response. The isolation, identification and manufacture of gluco- corticoids, the identification and synthesis of ACTH and vasopressin, and the demonstration of hypothalamic regulation of ACTH secretion were pivotal discoveries....