Between 4 percent and 10 percent of all children experience specific phobias during their lives, and social phobias occur in one percent to three percent of children.A Swedish study found that females have a higher number of cases per year than males (26.5 percent for females and 12.4 percent for males). Among adults, 21.2 percent of women and 10.9 percent of men have a single specific phobia, while multiple phobias occur in 5.4 percent of females and 1.5 percent of males. Women are nearly four times as likely as men to have a fear of animals (12.1 percent in women and 3.3 percent in men) — a higher dimorphic than with all specific or generalized phobias or social phobias. Social phobias are more common in girls than boys, while situational phobia occurs in 17.4 percent of women and 8.5 percent of men. Society and culture
Terminology
The word phobia comes from the Greek: φόβος (phóbos), meaning "aversion", "fear" or "morbid fear". The regular system for naming specific phobias uses prefixes based on a Greek word for the object of the fear, plus the suffix -phobia. Benjamin Rushs 1786 satyrical text, On the different Species of Phobia, established the terms dictionary sense of specific morbid fears. However, many phobias are irregularly named with Latin prefixes, such as apiphobia instead of melissaphobia (fear of bees) or aviphobia instead of ornithophobia (fear of birds). Creating these terms is something of a word game.
Rats survive indefinitely on extra salt alone, but in dogs and most humans, the amount of supplementary salt needed is so large that it is almost impossible to prevent eventual collapse and death unless mineralocorticoid treatment is also instituted. Diagnosis
Patients with a suspected diagnosis of hypoaldosteronism are often screened with simple blood tests. Potassium levels, plasma aldosterone concentration and plasma renin activity are the three most useful in the first instance. Low aldosterone levels in the presence of high renin activity, often with low sodium, high potassium, is associated with primary hypoaldosteronism. Secondary hypoaldersteronism may be suspected if renin activity is low with low aldosterone concentrations. The plasma aldosterone-to-renin ratio is calculated to determine if levels are sufficiently deranged to consider a diagnosis of hypoaldosteronism.If screening test is suggestive, a more definitive diagnosis is made by performing a saline suppression test, ambulatory salt loading test, or fludrocortisone suppression test. Imaging to detect an Adrenocortical adenoma may also be considered. Treatment
Aldosterone deficiency should be treated with a mineralocorticoid (such as fludrocortisone), as well as possibly a glucocorticoid for cortisol deficiency if present. Hyporeninemic hypoaldosteronism is amenable to fludrocortisone treatment, but the accompanying hypertension and edema can prove a problem in these patients, so often a diuretic (such as the thiazide diuretic, bendrofluazide, or a loop diuretic, such as furosemide) is used to control the hyperkalemia. See also
Addisons disease
Adrenal gland
Hyperaldosteronism
Pseudohypoaldosteronism

References


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