Glucocorticoids and psychiatry

ABSTRACT

Gluco-corticoids are known since 1935. They are of interest in all medical fields. In psychiatric practice, the gluco-corticoids are arising our interest in two ways at least i.e 1] psychiatric troubles secondary to corticoth‚rapy this means no specific anxiodepressive features sometimes, but the most frequently met is hypomanic clinical feature, whose intensity is depending to own predispositions. In few cases, that means serious psychotic complication including often a confusion mark. 2] The Dexamethasone test [D.S.T] this test is recently preconised as biological marker of endogenous depression inhibiting secretion of cortisol is failing in about 95%. It was assumed that it has high specificity but after first enthusiasm its diagnosis value was criticized and its specificity was devaluated. That features give to psychiatric corticoid connexions a relative value but a very interest remains to such a connexion as a field of further research in biological psychiatry