Repressed Hormones Test

Hi,

My son is 6 and has severe asthma. He has recently had an outpatient appointment with his consultant and as he has lost weight and seems more tired than usual they are going to test to see if his regular steriod medicatiion is repressing hormones in his body. (I am sorry but I can't remember what the test is called). He will be in hospital as a day patient.

Has anybody else had a similar test or had experience with this?

My son has had various tests/procedures before but i cant find alot online about this one.

Vicky

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It may be for a number of things but I'm hazarding a guess it's to test wether his adrenal gland is working sufficiency? If so it's called a synthacten test! It involved a cannula, being injected with something called synthacthen and then a blood test. There are 2 types, long and short synthacten test.... Google will probably provide a much better explaination than I can!

I have adrenal suppression from long term steroid use (and ironically its treated with steroids !)

Hope that isof some help -

Emma

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If it was a synacthen test I might be able to help. Both of my kids have had them, my daughter had a short test which proved that her adrenals were just functioning and my boy had both short and long tests as his short test showed his adrenals were switched off.

It wasn't awful, the put a cannula into the kids hands to administer the drug they needed to give an dto take the bloods from. They gave me Emla cream to put on their hands before we set off for the day so the insertion of the cannula was as painless as possible and we had a lovely day hanging around the hospital. There were no side effects from the tests.

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Thanks both for the info.

I should have asked more questions at the hospital, but i was shocked he had lost weight and was just thinking not more tests!

Thanks once again.

Vicky