Pseudo-Cushing’s disease is the most likely diagnosis in a chronically depressed patient with weight gain and increased urinary frequency, and blood tests can confirm this suspicion. The patient also may have a simultaneous diagnosis of diabetes, especially as a side effect of the new medications used by psychiatrists (ie, second-generation selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), but in this case, cortisol levels should be normal.3
REFERENCE
3. Orth DN. Cushing’s syndrome [published erratum in
N Engl J Med 1995;332:1527]. N Eng J Med 1995;332: 791-803.
