Failed AVS Redux

[Guest guest]

A month or two back, I posted numbers from my AVS. Fortunately Dr Grim recognized they showed a failure. To satisfy my endo, I got third opinion from another expert, this one also a nationally recognized authority like Dr Grim. For the time being, my endo has fired me, but I anticipate that might change. He's a good man and a good doc in a confusing situation and probably experience pressures from above and around to join a wall of silence and denial.

http://hyperaldo-too.blogspot.com/2010/12/report-from-my-avs.html

I have gone looking for other AVS reports on the web with little success, so I have two questions:

1) Is there a place where I can see two dozen or more AVS reports on the web?

2) From the few AVS reports I HAVE found, I gather that my cortisol numbers are 1/10 or 1/20 of the ballpark one would expect under ACTH stimulation. (Dr Grim noted earlier there must have been some problem with the ACTH stimulation.) I was also on 100 mg (half my usual dose) of eplerenone.

But just suppose there was no glitch in administering the ACTH. Does this suggest an inhibition or deficiency in the enzyme P450-17alpha, the enzyme #3 that " passes along " hormones from " pathway 1 " to " pathway 2 " in the diagram here:

http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/newborn/prenatal.shtm

I link the article for the relevance of the diagram, not the relevance of the article, which seems (on superficial examination) to examine some other deficiency.

The secondary sex characteristics are mildly attenuated in males in my family, and those characteristics come from pathway 3. If it is hard to reach pathway 2, then it is also hard to reach pathway 3.

If raw materials cannot get passed from pathway 1 to pathway 2, then the patient ends up with too much aldosterone, is that correct?

Is P450-17alpha inhibition or deficiency one of the recognized familial problems? (Is it GRA?) Are other causes of it known? Even if not, is it recognized as a distinctive mechanism of hyperaldosteronism? Is there a specialized treatment for it?

Thanks for any and all perspective,

AG