Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Urine lactate and cortisol levels in dogs with hypercortisolism
By Gal, Arnon et al.·Published in Journal of veterinary diagnostic investigation : official publication of the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians, Inc·2022·Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine, United States·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Canine urinary lactate and cortisol metabolites in hypercortisolism, nonadrenal disease, congestive heart failure, and health.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of senior dogs with hypercortisolism (a condition where the body produces too much cortisol) were studied to see how their urine levels of cortisol and lactate compared to healthy dogs and those with other health issues like congestive heart failure. The researchers found that certain urine tests could help distinguish hypercortisolism from other diseases. Specifically, measuring a type of cortisol in urine showed good accuracy in identifying dogs with this condition. This could help veterinarians diagnose and treat hypercortisolism more effectively in older dogs.
People also search for: senior dog hypercortisolism symptoms · dog urine test for cortisol · congestive heart failure in dogs
Abstract
Spontaneous hypercortisolism (HC) is a common endocrine disease of senior dogs, often overlapping in selected clinical signs and hematologic and blood biochemical abnormalities with nonadrenal diseases (NADs). HC and NAD could differentially affect cortisol metabolism, which is a complex 10-enzymatic pathway process. HC might also affect blood and urine lactate levels through its effects on mitochondrial function. We aimed to differentiate between HC and NAD via a urinary cortisol metabolites and lactate panel. We prospectively recruited 7 healthy dogs and 18 dogs with HC, 15 with congestive heart failure (CHF), and 9 with NAD. We analyzed urine by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. We normalized urinary lactate and cortisol metabolites to urine creatinine concentration, and then compared groups using a linear-mixed model and principal component (PC) analysis. A machine-learning classification algorithm generated a decision tree (DT) model for predicting HC. The least-squares means of normalized urinary 6β-hydroxycortisol and PC1 of the HC and CHF groups were higher than those of the healthy and NAD groups ( = 0.05). Creatinine-normalized urinary 6β-hydroxycortisol had better sensitivity (Se, 0.78; 95% CI: 0.55-0.91), specificity (Sp, 0.89; 95% CI: 0.57-0.99), and a likelihood ratio (LR; 7), than the Se (0.72; 95% CI: 0.49-0.88), Sp (0.89; 95% CI: 0.57-0.99), and LR (6.5) of PC1 for distinguishing HC from NAD. Lactate and dihydrocortisone had the highest decreasing node-weighted impurity value and were considered the most important features in the DT model; dihydrocortisol had no role in determining whether a dog had HC.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35658640/