Inappropriate Antidiuresis: Examples of an Hyponatremic Syndrome Resembling Exogenous Yasopressin Administration in Man

Hyponatremia has been recognized as a clinical entity since the finding by Loeb in 1932 that significantly lowered serum sodium and chloride levels are a characteristic finding in Addison's disease. It soon became apparent with the work of Winkler and Crankshaw in 1938, that hyponatremia was an accompaniment of diverse disease states as repeatedly confirmed since the introduction and clinical application of flame photometry for sodium analyses (Berry, Chappell, and Barnes, 1946; Fox and Baer, 1947; Hald, 1947; Bowman and Berliner, 1949; Wallace et al., 1951). Early papers emphasized the occurrence of hyponatremia in the two broad categories of cerebral and pulmonary disease (Peters et al., 1950; Sims et al., 1950; Welt et al., 1952; Cort, 1954); additional reports indicated a frequency of occurrence in tuberculous meningitis (Rapoport, West,