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Mathias Berger, MD; Karl-Martin Pirke, MD; Jurgen-Christian Krieg, MD; Detlev von Zerssen, MD
Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry Kraeplinstrasse 10 8000 Munich 40 Federal Republic of Germany

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1985;42(2):201-202.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

In the article by Stokes et al₁ about a multicenter study of the 1-mg dexamethasone suppression test (DST), the authors reported a very high percentage of abnormal test results in healthy subjects (35%, when three post-DST blood samples were used) and no close linkage between DST nonsuppression and cortisol hypersecretion (measured by urinary free cortisol excretion every 24 hours). Previous studies with 2 mg of dexamethasone, however, revealed a much lower rate of DST nonsuppression in healthy subjects₂ and found an abnormality of 2 mg of DST to be a highly specific, although not very sensitive, indicator for hypercortisolism.₃ Taken together, these results suggest that a dose of 1 mg of dexamethasone is too low to provide reliable DST results. We have recently performed 160 1-mg DSTs in 93 psychiatric inpatients who had different psychiatric diagnoses.₄ The post-DST plasma cortisol level was measured at 9 AM, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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