Addison’s and Cushing’s Disease Section 4.1 – Nursing Pharmacology Review Course
Real Life Pharmacology - Pharmacology Education for Health Care Professionals
Eric Christianson, PharmD; Pharmacology Expert and Clinical Pharmacist
4.9 • 773 Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This podcast episode provides nurses with a practical, clinically focused overview of Addison’s disease and Cushing’s disease, highlighting key differences in pathophysiology, presentation, and management. Listeners will learn how adrenal insufficiency in Addison’s leads to symptoms like fatigue, hypotension, and hyperpigmentation, while excess cortisol in Cushing’s presents with weight gain, hypertension, and glucose intolerance. The episode emphasizes important nursing considerations such as recognizing adrenal crisis, monitoring electrolytes and blood pressure, patient education on steroid adherence, and identifying medication-related causes of Cushing’s.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, nurses and nursing students. |
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| 0:50.7 | In this section, I'm going to cover Addison's and Cushing's disease. I debated about whether to put |
| 0:57.0 | these in here or not, but I really do feel like they provide a great understanding of what |
| 1:05.5 | steroids like prednisone and things like that do to the body. So that's kind of the frame of mind |
| 1:14.3 | that I'm taking when I present these two disease states that aren't that common to you. |
| 1:21.4 | All right. So Addison's disease, what is this? This is defined by a deficiency in cortisol. Cortisol is produced by the adrenal gland, |
| 1:32.8 | and if you remember that HPA axis, so that's the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal gland axis. |
| 1:41.7 | Okay. So basically there's a feedback of cortisol to the hypothalamus, which reduces |
| 1:50.8 | chemical mediators that, you know, promote the release eventually of more cortisol from the |
| 2:00.3 | adrenal gland or less. |
| 2:01.6 | So if cortisol is hitting that hypothalamus and, you know, it's telling the body like, |
| 2:10.3 | hey, we've got enough of this around, it's going to shut that down. |
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