Guest guest Posted March 15, 2004 Report Share Posted March 15, 2004 Have any of you with high candida kids seen a temporary spike in ACTH levels when candida was flaring and then a decrease later? A friend's child had a ACTH level of 111 (top ref range of 47) and then a few weeks later the test showed ACTH at 71 -- still high but a big drop. The doc wants an MRI but they couldn't get her to go to sleep with the pills so will need to do general anethesia (which she's had a bad reaction to in the past) to get an MRI. In searching for info on ACTH, I saw a vague mention of candida infestations possibly leading to autoimmune adrenal problems but couldn't find much more. Anyone know about this or other reasons for such an elevated number? Gaylen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 By far the most likely reason for this elevation is mild adrenal insufficiency, or a functional inadequacy of adrenal cortical secretions. This is very commonn in heavy metal tox. They obviously are not seeing a real doctor and they do need to find one. The point of the exercise is not to punish the kid and insurance company with expensive and unnecessary testing. The easier test is give the kid hydrocortisone for a while and see if ACTH normalizes and symptoms are reduced. An ACTH secreting tumor that only raises it to 111 will almost certainly not be visualizable on MRI anyway, and in any case such tumors very rarely reduce their output when you take hydrocortisone. 71 and 111 are really not very high. over 1,000 is high enough that an immediate MRI would be worth the risks of sedation. A real doctor is important at this point, which probably means no endocrinologists. Andy . . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . . . > Have any of you with high candida kids seen a temporary spike in ACTH levels > when candida was flaring and then a decrease later? A friend's child had a > ACTH level of 111 (top ref range of 47) and then a few weeks later the test > showed ACTH at 71 -- still high but a big drop. The doc wants an MRI but they > couldn't get her to go to sleep with the pills so will need to do general > anethesia (which she's had a bad reaction to in the past) to get an MRI. In > searching for info on ACTH, I saw a vague mention of candida infestations possibly > leading to autoimmune adrenal problems but couldn't find much more. Anyone know > about this or other reasons for such an elevated number? > Gaylen > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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