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Thirty-one patients with autoimmune polyglandular disease type I who initially had no adrenocortical and/or ovarian failure were followed for 1.2-12.1 yr (mean, 8.3) by determinations of adrenal (AA) and steroidal cell antibodies (SCA) and functional tests. Adrenocortical failure developed in 13 and ovarian failure in 11 patients. SCA or AA preceded adrenocortical failure in 12 of the 13 patients and were found in 2 of 9 patients (so far) who still have normal adrenal function (P = 0.001). SCA preceded ovarian failure in all 11 patients and were found in 6 of 11 patients who still have normal ovarian function (P = 0.02). The sensitivities/specificities/predictive values were 0.77/0.78/0.90 in all patients for SCA predicting adrenocortical failure, and 0.92/0.89/0.92 for adrenal-binding antibody (which includes all AA and most SCA) in predicting adrenocortical failure. The sensitivities/specificities/predictive values in females who initially had normal adrenocortical and ovarian function were 1.0/0.56/0.50 for SCA in predicting ovarian failure, 0.86/0.83/0.86 for SCA in predicting adrenocortical failure, and 1.0/1.0/1.0 for adrenal-binding antibody in predicting adrenocortical failure. Thus, the appearance of AA or SCA in a male patient without adrenocortical failure or a female patient without adrenocortical or ovarian failure signals a high risk of their development.
Ahonen et al. (Sun,) studied this question.