Health Topic

Adrenal Gland Disorders

Adrenal gland disorders, such as Cushing's Syndrome and Addison's Disease, happen when your glands make too much or not enough hormones.

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Important: This page is general information, not medical advice. It does not recommend or prescribe any treatment. Always consult your doctor or pharmacist before starting, stopping or changing any medicine.

About Adrenal Gland Disorders

Your adrenal glands are two small organs that sit on top of each kidney. The adrenal glands make different types of hormones you need to stay alive and healthy. Hormones are chemicals that travel in your bloodstream and control how different parts of your body work.

The adrenal glands make the hormones cortisol, aldosterone, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. They also make hormones that your body uses to make sex hormones (estrogen and testosterone). All of these hormones do many important jobs, including:

  • Turning food into energy and managing blood sugar levels
  • Balancing salt and water
  • Keeping blood pressure normal
  • Responding to illness and stress (your "fight or flight" response)
  • Timing when and how fast a child develops sexually
  • Supporting pregnancy

When you have an adrenal gland disorder, your body makes too much or too little of one or more hormones. The symptoms depend on the type of problem you have and how much it affects the hormone levels in your body.

There are many types of adrenal gland disorders, including:

  • Addison's Disease - a condition in which the adrenal glands don't make enough cortisol
  • Cushing's Syndrome - a condition caused by too much cortisol in the body, often from taking steroid medicines for a long time
  • Aldosterone-producing adenoma - a benign tumor (not cancer) that makes too much aldosterone and may cause serious high blood pressure
  • Hereditary paraganglioma-pheochromocytoma - an inherited condition causing different types of tumors that make adrenaline and other hormones. Some tumors may become cancerous.
  • Adrenal gland cancer - cancerous tumors, including adrenocortical carcinoma and neuroblastoma
  • Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) - a group of inherited disorders in which the adrenal glands don't make enough cortisol. The most common type is 21-hydroxylase deficiency (also called CAH1). In the United States, newborn babies get a blood test to see if they have CAH. People born with CAH may not have symptoms until childhood or later in life.

The cause of adrenal gland disorders depends on the type of disorder you have. Causes can include:

  • Medicines such as steroids
  • A problem in another gland, such as the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland releases hormones that affect how the adrenal glands work.
  • Changes in genes (mutations). These changes can cause the adrenal glands to make too much or too little of one or more hormones.
  • Infections

In many cases the cause of the problem isn't clear.

Health care providers use different tests to check for adrenal disorders depending on your symptoms and health history. For example, you may have tests of your blood, urine (pee), or saliva (spit). These tests check your hormone levels. Your provider may order x-rays, CT scans, or MRI scans to look for tumors.

Different types of adrenal gland disorders have different treatments. They include medicines and surgery. Radiation therapy is sometimes a treatment for tumors. There are treatments to cure certain adrenal gland disorders. For other disorders, treatments can manage your symptoms.

It sits within Endocrine System.

The lead U.S. institute for this subject is the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

When to speak to someone. Reading about a topic cannot tell you whether it applies to you. Speak to a doctor or pharmacist if symptoms are severe, sudden, getting worse, or simply not going away — and seek emergency care immediately for chest pain, breathing difficulty, sudden weakness or confusion, or a serious allergic reaction.

Research on Adrenal Gland Disorders

826 studies areregistered for this condition on ClinicalTrials.gov, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's public registry. A selection is below — the links go straight to the registry entry, not to a summary of ours.

What a registered study does and does not mean. Registration means a study exists and has been declared publicly. It says nothing about whether the treatment being tested works, is safe, or is available to you. Many studies find no benefit — that is what research is for. Never seek out an experimental treatment on the strength of a registry entry alone.

Research currently under way

Research already completed

Study data from ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved 2026-07-30. Registry entries are supplied by study sponsors and investigators; ClinicalTrials.gov does not verify their scientific validity. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH.

Where to read more

Rather than paraphrase, we point you to the primary sources. Every link below is to a government health agency, a national institute or a recognised medical body — grouped by what you are trying to find out.

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Diagnosis and Tests

Treatments and Therapies

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Clinical Trials

Medical subject headings

Clinicians and researchers index this subject under Adrenal Gland Diseases. These are the terms to use when searching medical literature.

This page is built from the MedlinePlus health topic record for Adrenal Gland Disorders, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health. Information is from MedlinePlus.gov. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and is not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH. Retrieved 30 July 2026.